HuffPosts Seth Colter Walls interviews some of the organizers of the Hillary Clinton supporters planning to demonstrate outside the hotel where the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee is set to meet and address what the hell to do about Michigan and Florida.

“You’re not going to write that we’re a bunch of hysterical women trying to create havoc, are you?”

CRY HAVOC! And Unleash The Hounds Of Protesters Pressuring Obscure Parliamentary Procedure Committee Meetings!!!

This is just sick.

Copper thieves force shutdown of Ohio soup kitchen
May 30, 2008 07:36 EDT

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Copper thieves have struck a major soup kitchen in Columbus, forcing it to stop feeding the needy.

The Holy Family Community Kitchen and Pantry says two large
refrigeration compressors were unbolted from their concrete pads and
taken away over Memorial Day weekend, and the thieves also stole copper
piping.

Director Frances Carr says the soup kitchen couldn’t
keep the food cold, so it spoiled and had to be thrown out. Carr says
that was tough to do at a time when so many people are in need.

By Wednesday, the facility had to shut down.

Carr hopes to reopen Monday but isn’t certain that will be possible.

The news isn’t just that they robbed a soup kitchen is Columbus, Ohio, rather There Are Soup Kitchens in Columbus, Ohio!

ARVADA, Colo. — Police are looking for two crooks who tried to disguise their identities by covering their faces with women’s thong underwear during a robbery of an Arvada Diamond Shamrock gas station. . . .

The man wearing the green thong over his face is in his early 20s. He’s 6 feet tall and weighs between 160 and 180 pounds. He has short black hair and was last seen wearing a dark blue shirt, blue jeans and dark shoes.

The man wearing the blue thong over his face is in his early to mid 20s. He’s between 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall, 180 to 200 pounds. He has short black hair. He has a 6-inch cross tattoo on his right upper arm and a tribal tattoo on his left upper arm.

. . . and Thongs over their faces!

Hey kids! Your favorite funny farmer has some interesting things for you to do today! Please be advised that you should be somewhat congizant of your surroundings - rabid reich wing Republican’ts infringing on your personal freedoms should be closely monitored and/or factored in your decision to engage in any of these activities.

- since Our Lady of the Concentration Camps has convinced a major corporation that they need to follow her fashion choices in their advertisements, I’m thinking it might be a good time to show them the other side of the coin. Go into a Dunkin Donuts, take a long time and order the most unusual items you can find on the menu, and then, just before it’s time to shell out the cash, call the store manager over and tell him that you don’t buy products or services from corporations that let right wing blogs determine their advertising policy, and walk out.

It certainly seemed to get the staff at the local branch of this corporation in a tizzy.

- find your local Republican’t propaganda catapultist (especially if you remember then being especially obnoxious when insisting all of the Putsch administration’s lies were factually accurate), and ask them if the Mouth of Sauron Little Scotty McClellan has always been a gawdless liberal traitor, or did he turn into a gawdless liberal traitor as soon as he started telling the truth about the Texas Souffle? Stand back, though - odds are a spittle-flecked rant is headed in your direction…

- ask your favorite card carrying member of the gawd squad if they feel that their marriage is more threatened or less threatened now that teh gayyyez can legally marry in Kully-Fornia and New York. Do they feel entitiled to an extra spouse or two, or are they looking to marry their pets, now that those sub-human non-heterosexual deviants can legally become spouses? When they say that they’ll pray for your eternal soul, tell them you’re planning on sacrificing some first borns on their behalf at the next full moon in return. Be sure to verify that your exit zones are unobstructed first, though…

As always, my melon has been filled with bloggy goodness from the likes of Hullaballoo, The Poor Man, and Jeebus’ General (among many, many others residing on the Fashionable Left Bank of Blogistan) - so much so that it’s hard to focus on much else, let alone that whole blogging thing. Have yourselfs a good weekend!

Am I missing something? Mind you, this is fun, even interesting. I just don’t think it’ll have much affect on a hardened military Junta.

MONTREAL: Women are being asked to volunteer their undergarments in an international effort to shame Myanmar’s ruling junta into giving citizens greater access to humanitarian aid and human rights.

Organisers launched the Canadian edition of the Panties for Peace! campaign this week with a call for women to send underwear to the Myanmar embassy in Ottawa.

Great cause, weird message.

Maybe there’s a severe panty shortage in that devastated nation. They seem to need just about everything else, food, water, freedom. Why not?

Could be they might get the message that the women of the world have had it with their repressive ways, and they better put their big girl panties on and deal with it.

Can we agree that the myth of the media being liberal is finally completely debunked?

So far, there’s been the embedded reporters in Iraq, Judith Miller on Iraq, Robert Novak on Valerie Plame, examples of the NY Times withholding info for a year, ABC News and Sinclair Broadcasting hit pieces claiming Bill Clinton was responsible for the lapses that might have prevented 9-11, ex-military analysts coached to spread war propaganda on all the major news networks (some of them profiting financially from that), etc. & etc. And now Jessica Yellin is speaking out about deliberate editing of the news and not-so-subtle persuasion coming from corporate higher-ups…. plus all the other examples Glenn Greenwald cites: Katie Couric, Ashleigh Banfield, Phil Donohue.

This is nothing less than compelling evidence that, in terms of our establishment press, our media is anything but “free.” Corporate executives continuously suppressed critical reporting of the Government and the war and forced their paid reporters to mimic the administration line. The evidence proving that comes not from media critics or shrill left-wing bloggers but from those who work at these news outlets, including some of their best-known and highest-paid journalists who are attesting to such facts from first-hand knowledge despite its being in their interests not to speak out about such things.

* * * * *

Yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary day in our political culture because Scott McClellan’s revelations forced the establishment media to defend themselves against long-standing accusations of their corruption and annexation by the government — criticisms which, until yesterday, they literally just ignored, blacked-out, and suppressed. Bizarrely enough, it took a “tell-all” Washington book from Scott McClellan, of all people, to force these issues out into the open, and he seems — unwittingly or otherwise — to have opened a huge flood gate that has long been held tightly shut.

Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan’s claims. One media star after the next — Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer — materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are “deferential, complicit enablers” in government propaganda.

I have little doubt that they would be telling the truth if they denied what Yellin reported last night. People like Williams, Gibson and Gregory don’t need to be told to refrain from reporting critically about the war and the White House because challenging Government claims isn’t what they do. And amazingly, they admitted that explicitly yesterday. Gibson and Gregory both invoked the cliched excuse of the low-level bureaucrat using almost identical language: exposing government lies “is not our job.”

Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and company are paid to play the role of TV reporters but, in reality, are mere television emcees — far more akin to circus ringleaders than journalists. It’s just as simple as that. David Halberstam pointed that out some time ago. Unlike Yellin, Donahue and Banfield, nobody needed to pressure the likes of Williams, Gibson and Russert to serve as propaganda handmaidens for the White House. It’s what they do quite eagerly on their own, which is precisely why they’re in the corporate positions they’re in. They are smooth, undisruptive personalities who don’t create problems for their executives. Watching them finally describe how they perceive of “their role” leaves no doubt about any of that.

* * * * *

This is the most vital point: this is not a matter of mere historical interest. This is not about how the media operated five years ago during an aberrational time in our history. This is about how they functioned then and how they function now. The same people who did all of this still run these media organizations and it’s the same coddled, made-up personalities still playing the role of “journalist.”

That’s what makes the NYT “military analyst” story so significant, and it’s why it’s so revealing that the establishment media black-out of that story continues. Not just in 2003, but through 2008, the networks relied upon Pentagon-controlled propagandists to masquerade as their “independent analysts.” Those analysts repeatedly spouted patently false government propaganda without challenge. The numerous financial incentives and ideological ties these analysts had were concealed. And these networks, now that this is all revealed and even with multiple investigations underway, still refuse to tell their viewers about any of it.

It’s not the Nightly News and hasn’t been for the past quarter century. It’s Fractured Fairy Tales. It’s the direct result of Reagan’s FCC, which stopped enforcing longstanding policy then officially eliminated the policy 21 years ago. It was the policy that compelled corporate broadcasters to present objective balance in their editorial content.

And after the Fairness Doctrine was ended, the majority of the corporate media rushed to fill the void with their own Unfairness Doctrines. Examples of critical reporting of both sides of a story or of certifiable facts that counter White House propaganda now are the rare exceptions to the rule.

A few reporters here and there, McClatchy News and Gannett News, a handful of old-timers like Seymour Hersh: these are the best and dwindling evidence of a ‘liberal’ bent to news reportage. And that’s only if you believe that digging for and revealing the truth is ‘liberal’ while willingly passing on the lies of elected officials is ‘conservative.’

In reality, real journalism always begins with skepticism about ‘official’ versions of what’s going on. It’s always been more essential to the health of our democracy than any of our government’s three branches, with the Judicial branch a close second.

But all these revelations make clear that our democracy is terribly unhealthy. And when a White House administration quickly becomes known for its secrecy, censorship, fear-based campaign strategies, disenfranchisement of minority voters, attacks on peoples’ patriotism, stonewalling of investigations and active efforts to cost opponents and media critics their jobs, our democracy is at its unhealthiest and in danger of collapse.

Moving back from the brink of that disaster is not liberal. It’s as American as the wise founders who created the Bill of Rights to protect our country from exactly the types of abuses conservatives and corporatists are foisting upon us today.

Update: Over at Firedoglake, Emptywheel points out that McClellan has finally confirmed that Bush and Cheney conspired to leak Valerie Plame’s identity, thus ruining a spy network that was developed to protect us from countries hostile to our interests from developing WMDs. That’s neither liberalism nor conservatism. That’s treasonous, damaging to our nation’s security and deserving of impeachment and conviction.

Nobody expects Congress to pursue that course after that was flatly ruled out by our Congressional leaders. The argument advanced - that it would be too polarizing - lacks any merit. The logical suspicion is that a few Democrats privy to more information than the public got, would also be tarnished for granting Bush leeway to proceed with various illegal actions, most notably the constitutional violations of illegal wiretapping but potentially elsewhere, too.

I may be a Democrat, but I’m an American and humanitarian before and above that, so I’ll critique Democrats where they fall short. And I can accept a Blue Dog like retired Senator Bob Graham - who was forthright about the lack of evidence on Iraq - over those like Jane Harman, because I maintain the notion that the federal government’s first and most essential purpose is providing good decisionmaking on national security based on the facts, not ideological bullcrap that shields the public from the interests being advanced… or damaged. My partisanship remains, above all, the best interests of a civilized world.

Most of the folks in the White House believe they are very special somebodies. Some, as they leave or get booted, decide to try and salvage their reputations or make some lucre off their experiences. Those left behind continue to believe they’re a higher breed of rodent, possibly even human, while their kiss-and-tell colleagues are nothing more than dirty rats for ratting them out.

Others are SHOCKED they broke bread with one who actually considers them to be less than honorable, as they’ve become so completely inebriated on the Kool-Aid that they live in a delusional la-la land. And noticeably absent from the back and forth sniping are most of the principals - the decisionmakers like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Tenet - who leave that sort of stuff to their lessers, since they actually ARE somebodies. Their Enablers-in-chief, their legal team, also largely remain silent because they understand their Miranda rights and that silence can spare a few convictions.

The only two exceptions thus far have been White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, who’s probably the designated denyer of the propaganda charge, since some propaganda is actually illegal. And Karl Rove, who quickly refuted the lingering taint of the takedown of Valerie Plame’s WMD-seeking network by denying his meeting with Cooter Libby had any thing to do with getting their stories straight. Although, as we recall, Rove barely escaped getting his nuts in that vise after initially lying through his teeth to the Special Prosecutor.

Rove understands that he’s a rat, too, and is content remaining a live one outside of a cage.

But what of Scotty?

he erroneously believed what President Bush was saying about the war but now is answering to a higher loyalty: “a loyalty to the truth.”

“The White House would prefer that I not talk openly about my experiences,” he said in a lengthy, at times combative interview with anchor Meredith Vieira. “These words didn’t come to me easy. … I’m disappointed that things didn’t turn out the way we all hoped they would.”

He added: “I have a higher loyalty than my loyalty necessary to my past work. That’s a loyalty to the truth.”

A White House official replied: “No one at the White House ever told McClellan not to talk about his experiences.”

Yeah, they’re so committed to the truth that they chose to speak without revealing their identity. And the compliant puppydog media continues to enable that.

McClellan said he “believed” what Bush was saying about the war — and the president did, too. “I trusted the president’s foreign policy team and I believed the president when he talked about the grave and gathering danger from Iraq,” McClellan said. “I believe he believed it was a grave danger, too. He convinced himself of that. When the administration was talking about Iraq, it was talked about as a problem that needed to be addressed. After Sept. 11, it was talked about as a grave danger. You get caught up in the White House bubble, you get caught up in the affection for the man you’re serving and defer.”

Asked if he’ll ever talk to the president again, McClellan said: “I don’t know. I certainly don’t expect it any time soon. I know this is a tough book for some people to accept.”

But McClellan gamely tries to remain in his favor by ascribing the best intentions to the president. He also claims to be hardest on himself. Yet he still has apologized to nobody, which is typical of a fleeing rat whose fame and fortune rests on the appointment Bush provided him.

He doesn’t go as easy on Cheney and Rice. But he ultimately gives everyone a pass:

McClellan says the book’s “larger message” is the problems with the “permanent campaign culture.” He said that’s the opposite of what he expected when he came to Washington after serving then-Gov. Bush in Texas.

“I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it,” McClellan recalled. “He talked about being a uniter, not a divider. … And then we got to Washington and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it’s played today.”

“These are good and well-intentioned people,” McClellan added.

Asked bluntly if Bush had let him down, McClellan said: “I grew increasingly disillusioned.”

Good and well-intentioned people who plotted the removal of Saddam years before they reached the White House and started actively discussing the war on Iraq months before 9-11. Good and well-intentioned people who refused to accept the warnings of the intelligence community about Chalabi’s untrustworthiness, about the lack of evidence of ties between Al Qaida and Hussein and about the forged yellowcake uranium documents. Good and well-intentioned people who savaged a diplomat who was a lifesaving hero in the first Gulf War and destroyed his wife’s career while ruining an entire spy network. Good and well-intentioned people who savaged all war opponents including valuable US allies, trashed the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, set up a global gulag, spied on Grannies for Peace and likely all the rest of us, in violation of the law. Good and well-intentioned people who still seek immunity for the telecoms who conspired to permit the illegal wiretapping. Good and well-intentioned people who profited personally from the no-bid contract awards, or doled out contracts to some of their biggest campaign fundraisers or contributors.

Good and well-intentioned people who have yet to attend a single funeral or issue apologies for the hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, or the tortured, or the murdered or the millions of families displaced.

Redemption without apology is what they want, including Scotty.

But they’ll settle for laws that shield them from prosecution and presidential pardons next December, if they’re even needed. Such is the world of rats and the skunks they rode in on.

My mother is full of those mother-type sayings. Growing up, I didn’t much appreciate it when she would toss out old chestnuts like “Make that face again and it’ll freeze like that” or “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” or this winner “You’re gonna be judged by the company you keep.” Hey, wait.

Maybe Mom was on to something.

Someone needs to tell McCain that that’s not Reagan. The poor, confused man.

Photo collage shamelessly borrowed from Welcome to Pottersville.

Even when a reporter speaks truth to power, the reward is a pink slip saying “Sit Down and Shut Up.”

Apparently, we now live in the United Soviet States of America (USSA), where free speech is punished, freedom of assembly is blocked, thousands can be jailed indefinitely without due process and elections are rigged.

Your reputation can be ruined mighty quick. Why don’t you hang out with nicer people, like that nice Eisenhower boy, or Norma Paulus. People might think you’re sane then.

At least not if you put together all the recent polls regarding race “being a factor” in the Democratic Primary and Loyola Marymount’s study of women’s underrepresentation in public office reported by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post revealing an “ambition gap” as opposed to any overt preference by the electorate favoring men over women.

This actually challenges some of my own preconceived notions, and blows much of what Bill Clinton has said lately about why Hillary hasn’t dominated the race for the Democratic nomination right out of the water.

“Somewhat surprisingly,” write political scientists Jennifer Lawless of Brown University and Richard Fox of Loyola Marymount,
women’s underrepresentation “is not because of discrimination against
women candidates. In fact, women perform as well as men when they do
run for office. In terms of fundraising and vote totals, the consensus
among researchers is the complete absence of overt gender bias.”

If you’re a Hillary supporter, or just a supporter of women’s rights in general, this is both good and bad news. Good in that, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Bad in that pointing the finger at me and claiming I’m sexist for saying it really, loses it’s sting.

Yep, not just al-Sadr, but the Sunnis are protesting the lame efforts al-Maliki’s government’s is making towards a compromise. Yet McCain and Bush keep claiming that progress has been made and we simply have to continue their folly there.

Worse, they’ll blame every setback on Iran as they plot yet another war hoping it’ll help them win the White House again. War plus war plus $5 per gallon gasoline.

If this is progress, soon we’ll all be walking to breadlines for a day old crust.

Just imagine, as a theoretical exercise, if the following protest action were ever considered…

The more I read about Scott McClellan’s belated revelations about the Titanic presidency, the angrier I’ve gotten. While he critiques many, and hints that he previously concealed secretive meetings between Rove and Libby during the effort to destroy valuable intelligence assets (the WMD tracking network of Valerie Plame), he adds criticism of himself. But he also grants himself and his Big Boss a moral out by suggesting they both were duped by others.

The biggest omission, common to most of the insider tales told by the rats fleeing the sinking colostomy bag presidency, is the lack of an apology. Instead of asking for forgiveness, McClellan subjects us to treacly sentiment:

He does have a number of kind words for Mr. Bush, particularly from the April day in 2006 when Mr. Bush met with Mr. McClellan after he learned he was being pushed out. “His charm was on full display, but it was hard to know if it was sincere or just an attempt to make me feel better,” Mr. McClellan writes. “But as he continued, something I had never seen before happened: tears were streaming down both his cheeks.”

Not one tear is shed for the 4,084 US troops who died as a result of the propaganda, deceptions and baldfaced lies. Nor the 300,000 troops who have suffered varying degrees of brain trauma. Nor the thousands of coalition troops of allies dead and injured. Nor the 84,000-plus Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of the war crimes of the Bush administration.

No tears and no apologies. Instead, McClellan seeks to profit from the sales of his insider stories, adding insult to the millions injured.

So I wish to announce a nationwide protest of his get-rich-sick scheme and urge you to join in it.

Leave your local booksellers out of this. But any corporate chain that chooses to sell this book is fair game. The process is simple:

1) Order a bottle of this perfume. While awaiting its delivery, practice holding your breath, which will come in handy after its use.

2) As an alternative, you might prefer using blood (you can utilize the juices of red mear) or a urine sample.

3) Whatever your preferred elixir, carry it to your chosen corporate bookseller, including department stores that carry the books. Pour it on as many of the books that you can and depart thhe scene swiftly.

4) If stopped by store security - or anyone else, yield passively. If an arrest results, remain compliant and keep your speech limited to requesting a phone call to an attorney. Providing your name is considered a courtesy to avoid any discord with legal authorities, too.

It’s an act of civil disobedience, a political protest, to speak for the millions displaced, injured or dead. Some judges will assess a fine for that or community service. Some may decide it’s an act of vandalism and assess some local hoosegow time. That’s part of the risk of civil disobedience, but so long as there’s no violence or resisting arrest involved, the penalties should not be too serious.

Be sure, at any court appearance, to state your motive as a peaceful political protest against the literary profiteering of war criminals.

Inevitability, in many areas of the country, your action should draw support from similarly outraged people. And if Michelle Malkin and her ilk can get Dunkin Donuts to pull an ad in response to their hateful bigotry, there’s always the possibility some will choose to quit selling McClellan’s book.

The point is to remind the country that while the ripoffs sponsored by the oil companies and the subprime mortgage hucksters and the outsourcing of American jobs are all extremely important issues, the wasted and displaced lives caused by the crooked Bush administration in Iraq remains the top moral issue every American should address to restore the conscience that our government so conspicuously lacks.

Stink the Ink! Take the profit out of the insider memoirs that come without an apology, and without a single tear. Profiting from human sacrifices is not an American value. It’s the worse form of pornography, akin to selling a ’snuff film’.

It may have a limited effect on McClellan’s endeavor, but it’ll limit the profiteering of other insiders and limit the efforts of publishers to award contracts to the departing rats. And the impetus to end the war must not be stalled by the political aims of John McCain.

Join us… and Stink the Ink!

Disclaimer: As stinking up or staining books is likely a misdemeanor in most states, this could be construed as a conspiracy, were I actually advocating such actions. I have presented here as an imagined event, just to stimulate thought and discussion about how best to protest this kind of profiteering off the deadly actions of a criminal presidency. My advocacy is merely that some protest action should be considered. It is the Bush White House and all its decisionmakers and propagandists that should be facing punishment, not a bunch of protestors. But in the absence of Congress acting on its constitutional mandate to provide the checks and balances for the president’s and vice president’s unlawful behavior, we should be standing up in some way to speak on behalf of the millions who have been damaged or killed. That’s how to support the troops, our citizenry, and humanity as a whole.

For decades, I’ve had to put up with the appeals you’ve sent to commit jihad upon my physical self. I’ve martyred my health with your promises of a glorious afterlife with 72 Bavarian kreme donuts set upon 72 non-biodegradable napkins with a bottomless urn of Columbian coffee to bathe in. All waiting for suet-sided me.

I’ve blown myself up even, to gargantuan proportions, causing national alerts of pending earthquakes whenever seismographs detect me walking to my Numbvee for my daily exercise of driving to one of your outlets to partake of your grease-soaked innertubes of dough drizzled with liquid sugar.

And now, instead of an apology for your perpetually appealling fat-fat-wahs, I hear you’ve decided to pull an ad featuring the rather tasty-looking Rachel Ray because she’s wearing a paisley scarf that a number of hateful elitists look at and see a resemblance to an item of clothing worn by men throughout the Middle East.

I note that she’s standing in front of the Oregon State Capitol Building, known as a hotbed of terrorism, and am surprised those frightened little pissants didn’t demand that you raze that structure with bulldozers, too. Which I’m sure you would have quickly complied with to demonstrate your patriotic allegiance to the almighty shrinking dollar.

In keeping with your commitment to appease the whackbooted scorntroopers of the Nutsy Party (like Neville Chamberlain did after JFK went to Berlin and announced “I am a jelly donut!”), I’ve decided to similarly demonstrate my moral cowardice by giving up your confections forever, replacing them with completely kosher bagels as soon as I can figure out how to inject them with Orthodox Bavarian kreme.

Ich bin ein chickenshit supporter of blathering bigots, too.

.

Sincerely;

Kevin Hayden

P.S. - If you’re done with Rachel Ray, please dust her with confectioner’s sugar and Passover that dessert dish to me.

Hey kids! Did you hear about those little imps at the State Department and their little prank? From Nukes & Spooks:

There’ve been stories before about State Department career employees’ unhappiness when an unknown Bush administration politico ordered historic diplomatic photographs removed from a hall leading to the department’s main cafeteria. They were replaced with huge color glossies extolling the diplomatic feats of President Bush, First Lady Laura Bush and SecState Condoleezza Rice.

…snip…

Recently, we are told, things took a turn for the worse. Outside the State Department ’s press briefing room on the department’s 2nd floor hang large official photos of Bush, Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney. The pictures were, er … modified by persons unknown. […] We’re talking fake mustaches and the like. The defacements were promptly cleaned up. They reappeared.

Luckily, I just happened to be at the State Department, and I was able to get the photographs that everyone else was unable to get. It seems that those little State Department scamps had a little game going, and I am going to let you kids play along. Can you tell whose mustaches were affixed to the pictures of Chimpy George W. Bush, Deadeye Dick Cheney, and Nurse Ratched Condoleezza Rice? Here’s the first set (don’t worry, kids, the links to the answers are under each set of pics):

Read the rest of this entry »