Your trolls have taken over your respective comments sections, and the resulting dialog (if by dialog, you mean obtuse Putsch fellating Republican’ts spewing Republican’t talking points, making personal insults about the blog authors and any person supporting Democratic political positions, and taking the comments thread off-topic) is so misinformed and shrill that it is no longer worth the time and trouble to look at.

There are others who have a similar problem with disapproving commenters, and at least one that I can think of uses his Monkey Mail in a form of blogjitsu that consistently shows how inane, uninformed, ignorant of the facts of the matter (no matter what they are talking about), and just plain wrong most Republican’ts continue to be, to this day, in spite of what reality has to say.

If you’re looking to create a blog rampant with Republican’t misinformation from Republican’t operatives, you’re doing a heck of a job. Otherwise, would you consider banning some of the more reprehensible morans commenting on your site? I’d rather not name names, but here’s a small minded example from each site:

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As my Mom’s had to deal with eye surgery, then a dislocated shoulder, and a bad cold, in succession, I just have to dedicate this post and its videos to her. It’ll take a few more weeks before her arm and hand are fully recovered, so I hope this speeds her healing.

I didn’t know David toured with the band. Or with its leader.

But for aficionados of any of ‘em, there’s quite a list at the last link.

Liberals rightfully knock him for his belated effort to clear his name long after the time when his words could have had an impact on actual and deadly events that followed. Hawk squawkers like Micheal Scheuer denigrate him, as well, making sure to add partisanship to their critique.

I’ll agree that Clinton’s appointment of Tenet was itself a mistake. He proved to be a chameleon glomming on to any boss he had with his sycophantic feelers. But I’ve yet to see any evidence that - as Scheuer alleges - Clinton refused to take down Bin Laden when he thought a clean shot was available.

At Balkinization, both David Luban and commenter, Ben, bring much needed perspective to Scheuer’s determinations of ethical and Constitutional behavior.

Far better is the critique that Larry Johnson and other CIA and intel officials are delivering directly to Tenet in letter form.

The Politico:

“They say we’re willing to compromise, and then we don’t get any compromise,” said Murtha. “We’ve already compromised. And we need to make this president understand, Mr. President, the public has spoken.”

Murtha said the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass another war funding bill with similar benchmarks for progress in Iraq after President Bush vetoes the legislation, as he has vowed to do.

“If he vetoes this bill, he’s cut off the money. But obviously, we’re going to pass another bill,” Murtha said. “It’s going to have some stringent requirements. … I’d like to look at this again in two months.”

Condo Rice indicated they’d also veto any new bill that penalizes Iraq’s deadbeat government for failing to meet benchmarks.

If the White House fails to compromise, it’s clear from Murtha’s statement at that link that impeachment consideration is not on the table today but soon may have to be.

Last week I said I’d be compelled to support Kucinich if other presidential candidates weren’t on board the push for impeachment of Cheney within 30 days. Though I’ve felt it’s long overdue, and real leaders are tardy on the point of impeaching the Prez and VP for certain war crimes, I’ll extend my personal deadline till Independence Day now.

Simply put, enough of the country is not there yet. But it’s clear that as the funding debate escalates and results of investigations unfold, a sizable percentage of the country will move to that position in the next 60 days.

Unlike Bush, who has set numerous deadlines for the Iraqi government which they’ve failed to ever meet, my deadline will not move again. If you’re running for any national office in 2008, and my vote is sought, I’ll need to hear you say ‘impeachment’s on the table’ and under serious consideration by July 4.

I refuse to vote for anyone that requires 60% support for impeachment from voters. Leadership, not followership, remains a sought-after characteristic by me on such a critical ethical issue.

Well, there you have it. Incontrovertible proof that Bush can win this war, provided by esteemed experts Eva Braun, Dr. Strangelove and Colonel Klink.

yes, we are too afraid to put him in blackface

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

john amato at c&l is reporting that black employees of radio stations are pretty p.o.’d about limbaugh’s “barack the magic negro” parody:

updated: rush limbaugh has angered many black employees over this parody song called “barack the magic negro” this isn’t the first or the last time that limbaugh will go after obama’s race…

i’ve been told that they have held meetings internally to deal with a ground swell of anger at rush because of this.

update: i’ve anonymously confirmed that stations around the country who carry the show are having concerns expressed by listeners and even their own workers of color about the obama parody, and the ensuing controversy in the media, and that respective managements are considering ways to address the matter with as little imus-like backlash as possible,..this is starting to boil over…

we hope it is starting to boil over. and you can help it along. we tell you how after the jump.

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George: “If I keep going in and out like this, with an occasional surge, and keep it up for two years, you can’t complain that I’m guilty of premature evacuation.”

“Was it good for you?”

Dead soldier: “… ….. … ….”

Exxon: “Who’s your daddy?”

I don’t have much to add to the (admittedly) anemic debate wheezing the last 2 weeks in the wake of the Virgina Tech killings. The logical questions that arise—why the database meant to screen out the mentally unstable failed to work with Cho, why the smallest and mostly symbolic attempts to regulate the flood of deadly weapons continue to go down in defeat, why the most liberal of our candidates can’t even muster the guts to ask these questions in the first place—are beaten down under a barrage of faux outrage lamely connected to some kind of “sympathy” for the feelings of the survivors.

But I will say this: the obvious comparisons to the endless abbatoir in Iraq are valid, whether they hurt Bill O’Reilly’s tender sensibilities or not. And they only heighten the filthy hypocrisies of the ludicrous conservative Supreme Court shedding copious tears for one kind of fetus over another in the service of their political agendas, while the so-called “pro-life” flank averts its self-righteous eyes, not just from the suffering of other nations’ children while we ply this God-damned war, but also from the children at our own feet, suffering after birth with no Operation Rescue to parade disgusting billboards on their behalf. As Eric Alterman writes:

Did you see that report earlier this week about increasing infant mortality in the southeast United States, particularly among blacks? It’s here, and it led me to muse for a book-to-be-named-later as follows:

And remember the Finns? Not surprisingly, perhaps, they devote less than half of what we do to medical care, as a percentage of GDP, and yet their infant mortality rate is half of that of the United States — and one-sixth that of African-American babies — and their life expectancy rate is greater. Perhaps all that education has made them smart enough to invest in preventative care and universal coverage. Then again, improving on U.S. infant mortality rates is a bit like besting a vegan in a burger-eating contest. Even China’s infant mortality rate is less than half of that of the Southeast United States, as well as that of our national capital.

And the Supreme Court decision on abortion, coupled with the Harvard Medical School study again dismissing any link between abortion and breast cancer led me to muse further on the reality of “choice” in much of America.

The state of Mississippi, for instance, home to nearly three million people, is also home to a single abortion clinic. It also boasts the highest infant-mortality rate in the nation and ranks 43rd among the 50 states in the number of women who have health insurance. In 2004, Mississippi failed to meet national standards on the length of time it took to restore foster children to their birth families and to place a child for adoption. Meanwhile, the counseling provisions also require that patients in Mississippi be told that abortion may increase the risk of breast cancer, despite the fact that the National Cancer Institute reported no scientific evidence exists to support this contention, a view supported when the British medical journal The Lancet examined dozens of studies of the same issue. (Yet another study, released in 2007 by members of Harvard Medical School examining data from data from 105,716 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study, which was established in 1976 to study a wide range of health issues affecting women, also found no such link.) Mississippi is also one of only two states that require a minor to get the consent of both parents to have an abortion, (though if the minor has been impregnated by her father, she needs only the consent of her mother). Not surprisingly, Mississippi can boast the highest teen birthrate in America. While this unhappy trend has declined nationally in recent years, in Mississippi it continues to increase, including particularly girls under the age of 15. Mississippi may appear to be an extreme example, but, in fact, it is not all that unusual. In fact, at the end of 2005, it earned a measly eighth place on the honor roll of states that “defend life” according to the rankings of the pro-life organization, Americans United for Life.

Clean up your own houses, you fools and jesters of the right-wing, before you start telling the rest of us how to live. Your priorities are showing.

UPDATE: I don’t remember this story getting play on anyone’s front page this week:

AUSTIN, Texas Apr 27, 2007 (AP)— A 27-year-old man has been arrested in connection with a makeshift bomb that was found outside a clinic where abortions are performed, authorities said Friday.
Paul Ross Evans has been charged with use of weapons of mass destruction, manufacture of explosive material and violating freedom of access to clinic entrances, according to a statement issued by the Austin Police Department.
Authorities were not saying how they identified him, said police spokeswoman Laura Albrecht. He is in federal custody.
The bomb was discovered Wednesday, and authorities had asked area abortion providers to be vigilant after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that banned a type of late-term abortion.
The bomb was found in a bag in the parking lot of the Austin Women’s Health Center. After an employee found the package, a bomb squad detonated the device.
It contained an explosive powder and two pounds of nails, said David Carter, assistant police chief.
Had the bomb detonated, it could have injured people 100 feet away, police said.

Two pounds of nails. Welcome to the self-cannibalizing world of Iraq.

The question now is, how will the Right handle Terrorism when it has a white face and a home-grown accent and grows straight out of its own hate-filled belly? Don’t expect to see this story shoved down your throat on Fox, or anywhere else for that matter. Mr. Evans’ case will be quietly handled with the hushed shame of an idiot child being relegated to the attic of a proper 19th-century family’s home. And some asshole in some extremist group will be waiting for him with open arms when the law-and-order types let him out on parole.

UPDATE TWO: Via Crooks and Liars, a link to a story of the ATF giving the hook to a nest of Alabaman survivalist paranoids with delusions of cavemanhood:

Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia…

Agents encountered booby traps at one site. They found trip wires and two hand grenades rigged as booby traps at the Collinsville camper home of 46-year-old Raymond Dillard, who holds titles of both militia major and fugitive from justice on an unrelated federal case in Mobile.
“We were prepared,” Cavanaugh said. “We suspect booby traps with these types of groups.”

My guess is that none of the gentlemen nabbed in this little action will be spending any time in Guantanamo tied up in stress positions, because people like this are too “American” to ever be considered truly dangerous. Even after Oklahoma, we continue to tolerate their presence until they create the kind of un-ignorable critical mass worthy of a rogue state. Instead, we haul people away for wearing liberal phrases on T-shirts, and strip 800-year old protections against unlawful imprisonment out of our law. I suppose as long as we hang on to our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, we can just blow the motherfuckers away when they come to illegally jail us.

Except…wait. That didn’t really seem to help these guys, did it?

For the first time since the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, the GOP has no appointed heir. From Bush I to Dole, to Bush II, every heir was anointed as a product of inevitability. But now that’s thankfully at an end.

If you support Bush policies (McCain), your chance of election is nil. As welcome, if the Bush family supports you (Romney), GOP voters will remain suspicious and keep their distance. And why not? They’re hoping their party can survive the damage of Dubya.

As it was with Reagan’s ascendancy, all eyes turn to Washington outsiders. Fred Thompson’s mentioned most, but it’s not at all apparent he can create a platform to run on precisely because of Dubya’s damage to every precept of conservatism that’s been neo-ed into a parody of non-parity.

Sam Waterston’s Unity Party effort, if it succeeds, will successfully drain every remaining moderate Republican from the eventual GOP nominee. Which is why I support the concept.

If our choices become a progressive Democratic Party versus a moderate Unity Party and the GOP fades into yesterday, the change will do our country good. But while the cemetery industrial complex rules the corporate boardrooms, I don’t see the demise of the GOP as inevitable.

The only way to achieve that is by clean campaign financing (unlikely as yet) or by the creation of a countervailing funding force that should be called the Peace Industrial Complex.

More than Kucinich’s hoped-for Dept of Peace, that would seem more essential to achieve: uniting the cash of socially conscious businesses and individuals to impact major media broadcasting and election campaigns.

St. Peggy of the Dolphins is in fine form in this week’s Wall Street Journal column, having drunk deeply of the bracing draught of Grey Goose before stumbling to her keyboard to tell us that we are scaring the shit out of our children. Peggy is, of course, rather an expert on scaring children and small animals.

Peggy starts out by declaring that a Los Angeles mural, which she evidently has never seen, is deeply traumatic to children. (Click here to see the mural. Make sure children are safely confined in a separate room to avoid possible trauma).

Now having actually seen the mural, you might well ask what’s so frightening about it? According to Peggy:

The mural is big–400 feet long, 18 feet high at its peak–and eye-catching, as would be anything that “presents a colorful depiction of the rape, slaughter and enslavement of North America’s indigenous people by genocidal Europeans.”

So, of course, the mural should be painted over and replaced with something smaller and more wholesome, say a picture of Spanish missionaries converting awe-stricken Aztecs simply by reading the Gospel to them.

What else does Peggy think scares children? Global warming. No, really:

It’s not only roughness and frightening things in our mass media, it’s politics too. Daily alarms on global warming with constant videotape of glaciers melting and crashing into the sea. Anchors constantly asking, “Is there still time to save the Earth? Scientists warn we must move now.”

Al Gore should just shut his fat mouth and stop scaring the children.

What else, according to Peggy, scares children? Why Rosie of course. And anti-smoking commercials.

As if all this weren’t preposterous enough, Peggy, filled with the vodka of human kindness, discovers at the bottom of her martini glass a heretofore unexpressed concern for the plight of poor children:

We are frightening our children to death, and I’ll tell you what makes me angriest. Affluence buys protection. . . . If you have money in America, you can hire people who compose the human chrysalis that protects the butterflies of the upper classes as they grow. The lacking, the poor, the working and middle class–they have no protection. Their kids are on their own. And they’re scared.

That’s right. The plight of poor children isn’t that they are going to bed hungry. It’s that they don’t have nannies to tell them that Al Gore is a big fat liar.

Not surprisingly, the sponsor of Peggy’s column was Skyy90 vodka.

That image was not digitally manipulated. Promise.

Coming the same day a leading international aid official abruptly resigned over allegations concerning his generous use of an escort service (and while Paul Wolfowitz continues to hang on at World Bank despite findings of an ethics breach amidst allegations of favoritism for the benefit of his Tunisian-Saudi girlfriend… and Alberto Gonzales hangs on despite being a freakishly scary incompetent crony yes-man) we see that the Christianist soldier-bots have infiltrated yet something else close to home, the once-proud Attorney General’s Honors Program where many attorneys (including, btw, m’self) start their careers with the United States Department of Justice, which, according to this WaPo piece, had been dominated by Bush-appointed politicos and packed with righties and purged of lefties (using such criteria as “found bad stuff on internet”).

None of this is a surprise, of course… still, the article notes the overt political tone of the interviews for the program, such as giving high marks to a Regent University grad for (correctly) citing a Supreme Court case overturning a Texas ban on consensual homosexual relations as the case he most despised, or other young cub lawyers duly praised for taking… unusual… positions in civil rights cases.

For its part, the Justice Department still points out that it has more slots than Christianists and Federalists who want to work there, and hence, some people without the appropriate conservative or Republican campaign credentials could conceivably get hired.

Small comfort to those of who might feel that the attorneys privileged enough to represent the Republic in its courts should be those most outstandingly qualified to do so, rather than those simply aligned with the party in power at the time they were hired.

But then, this is a microcosm of the entire world view of the people now in power, from the “K Street Project” to packing the military with yes-men to the U.S. Attorneys scandal and on… the government is seen not as a means to provide needed services to the people (or even as a means to help people help themselves) but simply as a partisan piggy-back, to use everyone’s revenues for the benefit of a privileged few. But hey… they see the rest of the world as existing for this purpose as well. So why stop now?

My count-down calendar tells me that there are 633 days left of the Bush Administration. Who knows what more mirth and merriment will follow in that time?

If you were surprised by Mike Gravel’s words at the debate, you really should realize what he has done as a public servant.

Some Republicans like to justify blowing up people. Some will let them live, for a ‘massage.’

As Judit noted two posts below, terror comes in many forms.

Truth comes in but one.

John Edwards at the first debate after not raising his hand to agree that there’s a Global War on Terror:

“I believe — and this goes to the question you asked earlier, just a few minutes ago — global war on terror. I think there are dangerous people and dangerous leaders in the world that America must deal with and deal with strongly, but we have more tools available to us than bombs. And America needs to use the tools that are available to them so that these people who are sitting on the fence, who terrorists are trying to recruit, the next generation, get pushed to our side, not to the other side. We’ve had no long-term strategy, and we need one, and I will provide one.”

Terror travels many roads.

But a conscience grows only on the path to truth.

Former Senator Mike Gravel, in the Democratic Presidential debate Thursday night:

We are mischaracterizing terrorism. Terrorism has been with civilization from the beginning. And it will be there to the end. We’re going to be as successful fighting terrorism as we are fighting drugs with a war. It doesn’t work.

Zuzu at Feministe, about the bomb found at an Austin, Texas, abortion clinic:

Why is it that the media and the government never calls the “pro-life” groups who plant bombs at women’s clinics what they are: terrorists? …

We saw something similar with the Virginia Tech shooting — the campus police initially dismissed the idea that the gunman would be a danger to anyone else — even though they hadn’t identified or caught him at the time — because they saw a dead woman and just assumed that it was a “domestic incident” and there would be no further violence. Clinic bombings are treated as the equivalent of shrugged-off “domestic incidents” — hey, it’s just violence against women. It’s not like it’s going to affect real people or anything.

The Birmingham News, today:

Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia. … The militia, which called itself the Naval Militia at one point, had enough armament to outfit a small army. …

Agents encountered booby traps at one site. They found trip wires and two hand grenades rigged as booby traps at the Collinsville camper home of 46-year-old Raymond Dillard, who holds titles of both militia major and fugitive from justice on an unrelated federal case in Mobile.

The conclusion is left to the student as an exercise.

He’s already been, just by being chosen, the excuse for a huge split with reactionary bishops around the world, possibly leading to a total parting of the ways between the bigots and the real Christians. Now he’s rubbing salt in their self-inflicted wounds:

The Rev. V. Gene Robinson became the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop. Now, he and his partner want to be among the first gay couples in New Hampshire to officially unite under a soon-to-be-signed civil unions law.

Make all the sheep and goats show their true colors, I say. The ones who leave over this are not really Episcopalian, but he is. Evidence? Later in the article, he adds this:

“Fifteen to 20 years ago, most Americans would have told you and been reasonably honest that they did not know a gay or lesbian.”

It’s that phrase “reasonably honest” that is the proof that he is genuinely, even hopelessly, Episcopal. Absolutist distinctions and dogmas (or should we say “unreasonably firm dogmas”) are for ideologues, not adherents (or should we say, “generally fellow travelling usual predominant supporters”) of the ancient Church of England.

That’d be Moyers, Stewart, Marshall and Halberstam, all on Bill Moyers’ Journal, tonight on PBS.

And… Bill blogs.

Better yet, go see more, including a contest, at this Crooks & Liars post by Nicole Belle.

According to the UN, nearly 2 million Iraqi people have fled their homes in the 4 year old war. 730,000 fled between February 2006-Feb 2007… approximately 2,000 every day.

To put that in perspective, that’s more refugees in one year than any of the following states: Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, or Alaska. The overall Iraq refugee population exceeds any of these states as well: Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Any of these 15 states, POOF!, gone.

And things are getting so much better in Iraq that its government now refuses to release casualty statistics to the UN. Its government is stuck, refusing to be a US puppet and admitting it can’t work out oil revenue sharing or the sectarian division. Even Bush crony Ahmad Chalabi is saying that.

The war exceeds the length of every US war except our Revolutionary War and Vietnam. Inflation-adjusted to current US dollars, once the money’s spent from the bill Congress sends to Bush next Tuesday, this will be costlier than any war except for Vietnam and WW2. One more supplemental will have to occur even if our troops pull out next Spring, so that will likely push us past the $531 billion the 13-year Vietnam War cost, which Bush will have achieved in 5.

And I ask you…. for what?

There really are some people who will win this war. The ones it made richer.

Figure out who that is if you want to see a victor.

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver has compiled 20 years of those values as practiced by certain officeholders.

It makes me glad I was raised by humans.

Josh Marshall sums up perfectly what has happened and why we’re still there.

Shorter explanation: Bush has caused more damage to the US than any person in my memory. And is incapable of admitting his errors. So he wants the next president to take the blame for the final outcome. Bush is inept, and a coward.

What’s wrong about Gravel? He makes perfect sense to me.

NBC’s Brian Williams, the moderator, chimed in. “Who on this stage exactly tonight worries you so much?”

“Well, I would say the top-tier ones,” Gravel responded, vaguely. “The top-tier ones. They’ve made statements.”

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden raised his hand, in an apparent attempt to establish himself as a top-tier candidate.

“Oh, Joe, I’ll include you, too,” Gravel said. “You have a certain arrogance. You want to — you want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country. I got to tell you, we should just plain get out — just plain get out. It’s their country. They’re asking us to leave. And we insist on staying there. And why not get out? What harm is it going to do? Oh, you hear the statement, ‘Well, my God, these soldiers will have died in vain.’ The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. And they’re dying in vain right this very second. And you know what’s worse than a soldier dying in vain? It’s more soldiers dying in vain. That’s what’s worse.”

So he violated the unwritten rule about not talking ill of fellow Dems. BFD.

When people are being murdered for nonsensical reasons, I’m not much for granting passes to anyone spouting hawk-talk. I don’t require proof that any politician wishing to be president might go soft against real enemies, so I dson’t buy that Dems need to sound menacing.

I prefer common sense. And that’s what Gravel adds in a straightforward way.

And remember, when Nixon was trying to suppress publication of the Pentagon Papers, it was Senator Gravel who took to the Senate floor, reading those papers into the record in direct defiance of that coverup.

We can use more like him.

eRobin reminds us why.

And she also refers us directly to YouTubes from two specific Iraq veterans whose words remind us why we must carry on against the force of and poor decisions of bad politicians.