Sunday Talking Heads Discuss Senator Phil "Mental Recession" Gramm (TPMtv Video Very Funny)
Was Phil Gramm right about America being a nation of whiners in a mere mental recession? Will John McCain continue to receive his advice? We take a look at the weekend's continuing Phil Gramm fallout in today's Sunday Show Roundup episode of TPMtv ...
Phil Gramm May Be Gone, But His Porn Lives On
Phil Gramm attempted to invest $15,000 in "Truck Stop Women." His money ultimately helped produce a film portraying Richard Nixon wandering nude around the White House.
Gramm's journey into porn began in 1973, when his brother-in-law, George Caton, rushed to tell him about an exciting low-budget soft-core production called Truck Stop Women. A promo poster for the film boasted of its buxom stars: "No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle." Caton, who was in charge of fundraising for the production, asked Gramm to become an investor. To entice his brother-in-law, Caton showed him scenes of Playboy Playmate of the year Claudia Jennings displaying her bare essentials (she is naked throughout much of the film).
Chris Matthews Confuses Barack Obama And Osama Bin Laden
Once Again (Video)
Talking about the flap over The New Yorker's controversial cover featuring Barack and Michelle Obama, Chris Matthews slipped up -- once again -- and said "Osama Bin Laden" when he meant to say "Barack Obama." Matthews quickly caught and corrected himself.
Watch Chris Matthews confuse Osama and Obama, and scroll down for a collection of Matthews' previous Osama/Obama gaffes:
Joe Biden: Military Commanders Want Obama To Visit Iraq
There was a striking moment just now on an Obama campaign conference call with reporters: Top Obama supporter Joe Biden said that all the military commanders he talks to privately say they want Barack Obama to make the trip to Iraq that's been ridiculed by the McCain camp.
"One thing I can tell you for certain from recent trips is commanders in the field...all want to see Barack Obama," Biden said, in a reference to Obama's planned trip.
Bush And Father Do Golf Fundraiser For McCain
If you're a high-flying Republican, and you can afford to take next Monday off to fly to Maine, have we got a treat for you. On that day, former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush are hosting a high-dollar fundraiser for John McCain near their home in Kennebunkport.
According to a solicitation sent by the McCain camp, for the low, low price of $5,000, you can play a round of golf at Cape Arundel Golf Course, Bush's home course.
'Keep up the fight,' Top AP editor once wrote Rove
Chummy correspondence with Fournier revealed in Tillman investigation
In its investigation of the misleading accounts that initially surrounded Pat Tillman's death and Jessica Lynch's rescue the House Oversight Committee on Monday shed some light on the White House's press-management apparatus and the chummy relationship between Karl Rove and AP scribe Ron Fournier....
John McCain doesn't email or use internet
Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has admitted that he never uses email and that his staff has to show him websites because he is only just "learning to get online myself". John McCain said he didn't feel a need to use email as he prefers to conduct his communications by phone.
Mr McCain, who turns 72 this year, would be the oldest president ever to be first elected to the White House.In facing Barack Obama, an opponent who is 25 years his junior and has made powerful use of the internet in his campaign, he is battling against claims he is stuck in the past.
........When asked if he went online himself, the Arizona senator responded: "They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself." ......
Hagel's Office Officially Announces Iraq/Afghanistan Trip With Obama
It's official: Republican Senator Chuck Hagel's office has put out an announcement that he will be joining Barack Obama on a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
In many ways, Hagel has become the mirror image of Joe Lieberman -- he is a conservative who has infuriated his party through his opposition to the Iraq War. However, Hagel has not crossed party lines to endorse Barack Obama as of yet, opting only to refuse to endorse John McCain.
McCain's Hillary Problem. He's running her same campaign,
and she lost.
Feel free to tell me I’m nuts for asking the question, but doesn’t it seem that, more and more, the McCain campaign is turning into the Clinton campaign? .........
Clinton Diehards Want Convention Vote
She may have given up, but a few of Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s people haven’t.
The senator from New York is said to be negotiating a respectful presence followed by a graceful exit from next month’s Democratic convention, and last week the party announced that Barack Obama would formally accept the party’s nomination in the stadium built for the Denver Broncos. But there are Clinton supporters clinging to the hope that if her name is placed in nomination and the roll call of the states is conducted, she might — might — still win.
Is Fournier saving or destroying the AP?
Ron Fournier says he regards Sandy Johnson, his predecessor as head of The Associated Press’s Washington bureau, as “a mentor.” Johnson, though, regards Fournier, who replaced her in a hard-feelings shake-up in May, as a threat to one of the most influential institutions in American journalism.
“I loved the Washington bureau,” said Johnson, who left the AP after losing the prestigious position. “I just hope he doesn’t destroy it.”
CORPORATE MEDIA COLLUDES WITH DEMOCRACY'S DEMISE
In line with what I was saying yesterday about the Corporate Media, AP in particular, the following sheds light on the subject in a brilliant way…
Our media institutions, deeply embedded in the power structures of society, are not providing the information that we need to make our democracy work. To put it another way, corporate media consolidation is a corrosive social force. It robs people of their voice in public affairs and pollutes the political culture. And it turns the debates about profound issues into a shouting match of polarized views promulgated by partisan apologists who trivialize democracy while refusing to speak the truth about how our country is being plundered.
Airport scans for illegal downloads on iPods, mobile phones and laptops
IPods, mobile phones and laptops could be examined by airport customs officials for illegal downloads under strict new counterfeiting measures being considered by G8 governments this week, it is claimed.
The measures form part of an international agreement aimed at stamping out piracy, but there are fears that individuals who have illegally downloaded songs or video clips on to MP3 players and phones for personal use could also be caught out.
MAKING IT: How Chicago shaped Obama
One day in 1995, Barack Obama went to see his alderman, an influential politician named Toni Preckwinkle, on Chicago’s South Side, where politics had been upended by scandal. Mel Reynolds, a local congressman, was facing charges of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer. (He eventually resigned his seat.) The looming vacancy set off a fury of ambition and hustle; several politicians, including a state senator named Alice Palmer, an education expert of modest political skills, prepared to enter the congressional race. Palmer represented Hyde Park—Obama’s neighborhood, a racially integrated, liberal sanctuary—and, if she ran for Congress, she would need a replacement in Springfield, the state capital. Obama at the time was a thirty-three-year-old lawyer, university lecturer, and aspiring office-seeker, and the Palmer seat was what he had in mind when he visited Alderman Preckwinkle.
Voter registrations in Florida show 'huge swing' toward Democrats
An escalating number of voters registering as Democrats is providing evidence that the 2008 election could produce a wave of support for Barack Obama — and trigger a decades-long shift of party allegiance that could affect elections for a generation.
The numbers are ominous for Republicans: Through May, Democratic voter registration in Broward County was up 6.7 percent. Republican registrations grew just 3 percent while independents rose 2.8 percent. Democrats have posted even greater gains statewide, up 106,508 voters from January through May, compared with 16,686 for the Republicans. "It's a huge swing," says Marian Johnson, political director for the Florida Chamber of Commerce. "I looked at that and said, 'Wow.'"
Ex-NYT correspondent: FISA update is 'giant step toward fascism'
For more than 20 years, Chris Hedges reported from around the globe as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and other outlets, working from countries with little to no respect for a free and independent press, where his phone was bugged and he was trailed by government agents to prevent dissidents and whistle-blowers from speaking to him.
Now, with the adoption of a sweeping new surveillance law, the United States may become one of those countries, Hedges says.
Barack Obama doesn't rule out Hillary Clinton for vice president
Barack Obama told a potential donor to his campaign that Hillary Rodham Clinton is on his list of possible vice presidential running mates, but that her husband's status as a former president makes matters "complicated."
Jill Iscol, a faithful Democratic donor who was an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, said Obama reached out to her because he heard she was unhappy about the way the New York senator had been treated by the Democratic Party and the media.
John McCain -- 61 Flip-Flops and Counting
Editor's Note: Writer Steve Benen has graciously compiled a comprehensive tally of John McCain's flip-flops on issues ranging from national security to energy. The following is Benen's list of 61 clear 180-degree switches by McCain on the biggest issues of the day.
1. McCain thought Bush's warrantless wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
2. McCain insisted that everyone, even "terrible killers," "the worst kind of scum of humanity," and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, "deserve to have some adjudication of their cases," even if that means "releasing some of them." McCain now believes the opposite.
3. He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.".......
The Obamacons
A number of friends of mine have commented on an odd phenomenon that they have observed — conservative Republicans they know who are saying that they are going to vote for Barack Obama. It seemed at first to be an isolated fluke, perhaps signifying only that my friends know some strange conservatives. But apparently columnist Robert Novak has encountered the same phenomenon and has coined the term “Obamacons” to describe the conservatives for Senator Obama.
Now the San Francisco Chronicle has run a feature article, titled “Why Some Conservatives Are Backing Obama.” In it they quote various conservatives on why they are ready to take a chance on Barack Obama, rather than on John McCain.
Robert Redford pins hopes on victory for Obama
IF BARACK Obama doesn't win November's presidential election in the United States, "you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye", the actor and director Robert Redford told an audience in Dublin last night.
Speaking at a public interview in Trinity College in advance of his conferral with an honorary degree by the university today, Redford said he hoped Obama would win because while John McCain "represents yesterday", the Democrat embodied the sort of change America needed.
Asked by Michael Dwyer, film correspondent of The Irish Times , if he was looking forward to "regime change" in the US, Redford said: "Yes. Where my country is at the moment, I'm not confident of anything. I'm hopeful...
The FBI's plan to "profile" Muslims
It's unconstitutional, un-American -- and it might hurt, rather than help, the FBI's effort to stop real acts of terror. The U.S. Justice Department is considering a change in the grounds on which the FBI can investigate citizens and legal residents of the United States. Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.
McCain's Response to Chief Economic Adviser's Stupid Statement About America being in a "Mental Recession" and That America is a "Nation of Whiners" (Video)
McCain declares that his campaign's national co-chair and chief economics adviser, Phil "Mental Recession" Gramm, doesn't speak for him:
McCain: Social Security funding 'a disgrace'
The system for funding Social Security is "a disgrace" because it forces young workers to pay into a program that is unlikely to benefit them in its current form, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said this week, wading into politically touchy territory.
Like many other politicians, McCain often questions the long-term viability of the government retirement program. He raised eyebrows with an unusually harsh assessment Monday at a town-hall forum in Denver, and waited until he was in Ohio on Wednesday to go into detail about possible solutions.
Hillary Explains Vote Against FISA
As you may have heard by now, Barack Obama voted for the FISA cave-in bill in the Senate today, and Hillary voted against it.
Hillary has now explained her vote in a new statement...
The legislation also makes no meaningful change to the immunity provisions. There is little disagreement that the legislation effectively grants retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies. In my judgment, immunity under these circumstances has the practical effect of shutting down a critical avenue for holding the administration accountable for its conduct. It is precisely why I have supported efforts in the Senate to strip the bill of these provisions, both today and during previous debates on this subject. Unfortunately, these efforts have been unsuccessful...
Obama, McCain Skirmish Over Gramm's "Nation Of Whiners", America in "Mental Recsession" Comment (Video)
Hoping to force John McCain to own Phil Gramm's assertion that we're in a "mental recession" and are a "nation of whiners," Barack Obama himself has just hit his foe over the remark.
"One of his top economic advisors, former Senator Phil Gramm, said that we're merely in a mental recession," Obama told reporters moments ago. "He didn't say this, but I guess what he meant was it's a fiction of your imagination, these high gas prices."
"A nation of whiners," Obama repeated. "Now this comes after Senator McCain recently admitted that his energy proposals for the gas tax holiday and the drilling, will have mainly psychological benefits.
Jeb Bush keeps a high-impact low profile
When Jeb Bush visited Kingston, Jamaica, last July, his hosts pulled out all the stops. They brought in a military band, threw a lavish reception at the home of the island's governor general and paid $60,000 for him to give a speech. The theme of the speech? Entrepreneurial capitalism.
Bush is becoming quite an expert on that. In the 18 months since leaving the Florida Governor's Mansion, he has quietly remade himself into a capitalist-entrepreneur extraordinaire. Capitalizing on his eight years as governor and a network of Bush family supporters, he leads a busy, and lucrative, life: global speaking engagements, a new consulting firm and affiliations with three big businesses. He earns hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and stock and has joined the ranks of private equity executives on Wall Street.
'Public' online spaces don't carry Free Speech, Rights?
Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.
The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services - from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video - become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.
Canadian ISPs Plan Net Censorship
A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global. Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada’s two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports anonymous sources within TELUS.
“It's beyond censorship, it is killing the biggest ecosystem of free expression and freedom of speech that has ever existed,” I Power spokesperson Reese Leysen said. I Power was the first group to report on the possible changes......
Over-the-counter Cloak and Dagger:
Spies For Hire by Tim Shorrock
But nobody has ever bothered to examine the scope and impact of private contractors in the US intelligence community. That is, until now. Thanks to Tim Shorrock, an investigative journalist who has been researching and writing on the intersection of national security and business issues for over 25 years, we now have a path-breaking book that reveals in copious detail just how far the US intelligence community depends on private contractors.
Waxman threatens AG with contempt unless he gets
FBI's Cheney transcripts
Waxman says the interview transcript is vital to the Oversight Committee's investigation of the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame. In a letter to Mukasey (.pdf), Waxman noted that Cheney's former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told the FBI it was "possible" that Cheney told him to expose Plame after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly undercut the administration's claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.
"The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable," Waxman told Mukasey. "When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information in the interview could be made public in a criminal trial and that there were no restrictions on Special Counsel Fitzgerald's use of the interview."
Decoding the New FISA Bill
The bill, which passed the House last week by a landslide, makes two drastic changes to our current surveillance laws:
1. First, the bill generously grants telecommunications companies a broad immunity against financial and criminal liability for helping the U.S. government spy on domestic communications without a warrant or probable cause. There’s only one string attached: Telcoms must show that the government asked them to spy on Americans. Translation: Telcoms will get off the hook as long as they can rustle up some evidence that the government actually asked them to violate the law.
2. Second, if the bill is passed by the Senate, citizens will have no effective right to privacy in electronic communications because the government will always be able to claim that calls were intercepted in order to ward off a terrorist threat. Translation: As long as the “target” of the surveillance is reasonably believed by the government to be abroad, under this bill the NSA can intercept communications between that target and U.S. citizens without any form of judicial oversight whatsoever.....
John McCain: 'I hate the bloggers' (Video)
Hey right wing bloggers. I think he’s talking about you too.
JOHN MCCAIN: “Now we’ve got the cables. We’ve got talk radio. We’ve got the bloggers. I hate the bloggers. We’ve got all kinds of sources of information.”
Obama to accept before 75,000+
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will leave the hall of the Democratic National Convention in Denver and deliver a rock-star-style acceptance speech at nearby Invesco Field at Mile High, quadrupling his live audience, the party announced Monday.
The speech, in the stadium that is home of the Denver Broncos, will be on the fourth and final night of the convention, Aug. 28. Adding to the historic resonance of the first nomination of an African-American for president, that date is the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”
GOP Looks To Redistrict Itself Back Into Power
For months, a sense of dread has been percolating within Republican circles over potentially massive congressional losses in 2008. Facing the possibility of a more pronounced minority status in the House and more than a couple seats lost in the Senate, the GOP has begun setting its sights on a contingency plan: redistricting.
Senator Kerry: Senator McCain 'A Changed Man' (Video)
"John McCain has changed in profound and fundamental ways that I find personally really surprising, and frankly upsetting," said Democratic Senator John Kerry in a Sunday appearance on CBS's Face the Nation.
"This is a different John McCain. This is not the Senator John McCain; this is want-to-be president John McCain."
"And the result is that John McCain has flip-flopped on more issues than I was even ever accused possibly of thinking about!" continued Kerry. "I mean, this is extraordinary what he's done: He's changed on taxes; he's now in favor of the Bush tax cut. If you like the Bush economy, if you like the Bush tax cut and what it's done to our economy, making wealthier people wealthier and the average middle class struggle harder, then John McCain is going to give you a third term of George Bush and Karl Rove.
When Fox News Is the Story
Like most working journalists, whenever I type seven letters — Fox News — a series of alarms begins to whoop in my head: Danger. Warning. Much mayhem ahead.
Once the public relations apparatus at Fox News is engaged, there will be the calls to my editors, keening (and sometimes threatening) e-mail messages, and my requests for interviews will quickly turn into depositions about my intent or who else I am talking to.
And if all that stuff doesn’t slow me down and I actually end up writing something, there might be a large hangover: Phone calls full of rebuke for a dependent clause in the third to the last paragraph, a ritual spanking in the blogs with anonymous quotes that sound very familiar, and — if I really hit the jackpot — the specter of my ungainly headshot appearing on one of Fox News’s shows along with some stern copy about what an idiot I am.
How dare they rip the Fourth Amendment?
Early next week the U.S. Senate will vote on an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a few small amendments intended to immunize telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love.
That such a gutting of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution even made it out of committee is yet another stain on the gutless and seemingly powerless Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.
That a majority on both sides of the aisle — not least of them the presumptive nominees for president of both political parties — intend to vote for such a violation of Americans' right to privacy and of the sanctity of their personal communications is a stunning surrender to those who want us to live in fear forever.
Database of Lost Civil Liberties Since 9/11
This is the home page for the Loss of Civil Liberties Since 9/11 investigative project, one of several grassroots investigations being hosted on the History Commons website. The data published as part of this investigation has been collected, organized, and published by members of the public who are registered users of this website.
McCain Battles a Nemesis, the Teleprompter
Senator John McCain was performing relatively smoothly as he unveiled his energy plan. He managed to limit the mechanical hand chops and weirdly timed smiles that can often punctuate his speeches. He delivered his lines with an ease that suggested a momentary peace with his longtime nemesis, the teleprompter. (He relied on a belt-and-suspenders approach, with text scrolling down screens to his left and right, and on a big TV set in front of him.)
Obama mulling major speech in front of Berlin's Brandenburg gate; to evoke, Reagan, Kennedy. "Ich bin ein Obama"
(D-Ill.) delivering an outdoor address in front of the Brandenburg gate. The thinking is Obama would follow in the footsteps of two very famous Cold War-era speeches of U.S. presidents speaking in Germany: JFK "Ich bin ein Berliner" and Reagan "tear down this wall." It would probably be Obama's only public speech during upcoming visits to Germany, France and England on a swing to include stops in Israel and Jordan. There is still no date for the trip. German news sources are reporting the Obama team is working on a visit during the "second half of this month".
Spying Powers Face More Tests: Three FISA Amendments Are Up for a Vote Next Week in Senate
The final amendment, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), would delay the effective date of the immunity provision until inspectors general of the Dept. of Justice, the Pentagon and several other agencies have finished an investigation into the warrantless surveillance program and reported their findings to Congress. That investigation is already included in the House-passed compromise soon to be tackled in the Senate. But privacy groups argue that the investigation would hold greater significance if the conclusions can inform how to handle the participating telecoms.
NSA Spying Judge Defends Rule of Law,
Congress Set to Strip His Power
Just days before the Senate will convene to give a final blessing to President Bush's secret, warrantless wiretapping program, a federal court judge ruled that his legal justification for the surveillance has no legal merit.He's the same judge Congress is trying to save the nation's telecoms, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, from having to face in court.
Late Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling (.pdf) in a case against the government alleging illegal spying, finding that in 1978 Congress had clearly set out the rules for wiretapping inside the United States and that Bush's claims to have inherent authority outside of those rules did not pass Constitutional muster.....