The Liberal Patriot Blog
 The Liberal Patriot Blog is dedicated to collecting and sharing information about National and State [New Hampshire] Political Action, News, and Events.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Intelligunt Desine: Even catholics aren't THAT stupid.....

Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

….

In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe.

"If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly

Full article @ yahoo news

The American Taliban won't care they think the pope is the anti-christ anyway...... well even a broken clock is right twice a day.





Congress helps themselves

"The Republican-controlled Congress helped itself to a $3,100 pay raise on Friday, then postponed work on bills to curb spending on social programs and cut taxes in favor of a two-week vacation."
and
"Lawmakers automatically receive a cost of living increase each year, unless Congress votes to block it."

They're cutting programs and lining their own pockets? Have they no decency? Why are we tolerating this???

Friday, November 18, 2005

Budget passes 215-217



Last night the House voted 215 to 217 to pass the budget reconciliation bill - a bill that makes massive cuts to student loans, school lunch programs, Medicaid, food stamps, and foster child programs. This bill is going to be closely followed by a tax cut bill, which will ensure the $70 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest few continues. So - the Waltons of Wal-Mart get a tax cut, while NH college students get another $6000 added to their debt.

Both Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley were initially against the budget cuts, but changed their tune when drilling in ANWR was taken off the bill by House leadership. The Senate still is strongly in favor of ANWR - and it will be put back in, no matter what these NH Congressional ninnies were told.

PLEASE CALL BASS/BRADLEY TODAY The 1-800 number is still working. That number is 1-800-426-8073.
Here's a sample message:
We are disappointed that early this morning, Rep. _____ voted for the House budget reconciliation bill that included harmful cuts in Medicaid, child support, food stamps, and other programs for vulnerable Americans. Members of Congress who voted for those cuts said they were necessary to reduce our deficit. Given Rep. ______'s apparent concern for our nation's deficit, we certainly hope and expect that he will vote AGAINST the tax cutting bill that may be considered on the House floor today. The tax cutting bill will increase our deficit and more than one-third of the $57 billion price tag comes from extending the tax cuts on capital gains and dividends whose benefits go overwhelmingly to the wealthy and which don't expire until 2008. It would be unconscionable for Rep. _____ to vote to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans on the same day that he voted to make it harder for the nation's neediest to get health care, buy food, and get the child support they are owed. Of course, by holding the votes so close together, at least Rep. _____'s constituents can more easily judge where his priorities lie.

Call, email, fax - whatever - but let Bass/Bradley know that you strongly disapprove of his vote in favor of the budget - and that NH voters have long memories.

2005 "10 Worst Toys" List

W.A.T.C.H.'s annual "10 Worst Toys" list nominates representative toys with the potential to cause childhood injuries, or even death. W.A.T.C.H.'s annual "Toy Conference" has generated extensive national press and media coverage. Because of these efforts, and the positive response from both the media and the public, there have been many toy and product design changes. Founder Edward M. Swartz and W.A.T.C.H. have fearlessly exposed potentially dangerous toys to the general public. As a result, children’s lives have been saved.

Please Click on Image to Learn More
Baby Serena - Baby I'm Yours Camouflage Water Bomb Fun Kit Splatmatic Pistol Splat Paintball Shooter Animal Alley - Ponies City Blocks
Baby Serena - Baby I'm Yours Camouflage Water Bomb Fun Kit Splatmatic Pistol Splat Paintball Shooter Animal Alley - Ponies City Blocks
The Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King Uruk-Hai Crossbow Set Including Electronic Light 'n' Sound Sting Sword Air Kicks Kickaroos Anti-Gravity Boots Fisher Price's Little Mommy Bath Baby Doll Fantastic 4 Electronic Thing Hands Star Wars - Revenge Of The Sith Energy Beam Blaster
The Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King Uruk-Hai Crossbow Set Including Electronic Light 'n' Sound Sting Sword Air Kicks Kickaroos Anti-Gravity Boots Fisher Price's Little Mommy Bath Baby Doll Fantastic 4 Electronic Thing Hands Star Wars - Revenge Of The Sith Energy Beam Blaster

Get ready for the swift boating!

An influential House Democrat who voted for the Iraq war called Thursday for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, another sign of growing unease in Congress about the conflict.

"This is the immediate redeployment of American forces because they have become the target," said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, one of Congress' most hawkish Democrats. At times during his remarks to reporters, the decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Marine was choking back tears.

from huffington post

"It's Time For Them To Come Home" Representative John Murtha (D-PA), conservative Democrat, decorated Vietnam veteran, patriot, said those words today about our troops in Iraq. Murtha discussed his reasons with a gruff eloquence and with intelligence. Certainly persons of good faith can completely disagree with Murtha's assessment.

What they cannot do is question Murtha's patriotism. Murtha said "we have to do the right thing." And Murtha believes withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is the right thing to do.

from daily kos

Vietnam Vet Murtha on Cheney: I like guys who got five deferments and (have) never been there and send people to war, and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.” (Via Nitpicker)

I think he deserves the medal of freedom...

A North Carolina man who was charged yesterday with accepting kickbacks and bribes as a comptroller and financial officer for the American occupation authority in Iraq was hired despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990's.

The job gave the man, Robert J. Stein, control over $82 million in cash earmarked for Iraqi rebuilding projects.

from huffington post


Thursday, November 17, 2005

HIstoric Defeat of Republican Spending Bill

“Many members said the bill’s defeat, by 224 to 209 votes, was the first rejection of an appropriation measure they could recall since Republicans assumed House control in 1995. The loss left the leadership uncertain whether to bring up another budget measure, which calls for $50 billion in cuts over five years.”

In a dramatic rebuke of conservative leadership, the House has defeated the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education spending bill for Fiscal Year 2006. This year’s bill, which contains one-third of all domestic spending, calls for deep cuts in critical government programs.

The vote was scheduled for 15 minutes but lasted more than a half hour. This time, the conservative leaders couldn’t twist enough arms.

UPDATE: This bill seemed to be OK with the right-wing until Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) cut out all the pork.

UPDATE II: More on the loss for conservative leadership from a Hill staffer, via The Plank:

The defeat was embarassing in more than one respect. First, they lost. Second, they looked hapless while losing. Rather than stopping the bleeding, they held the vote open for a long time, but had a twenty vote deficit. Very few of those votes were budging. To make the effort to hold the vote open and then to lose looks exceptionally weak.

from thinkprogress


Wednesday, November 16, 2005




George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice are flying on Air Force One.
The President looks at Cheney, chuckles, and says, " You know, I
could throw a $1,000 bill out the window right now and make somebody very
happy".

The Vice President shrugs and says,"Well, I could throw 10 $100 bills out
the window and make 10 people very happy".

Not to be outdone, the Secretary of Defense says, "Of course, I could throw
100 $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people happy".

The pilot rolls her eyes and says to her co-pilot, "Hell, I could throw the
three of them out the window and make 56 million people really happy."

Joe Biden, another John Kerry type insider...

From today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Former Sen John Edwards of North Carolina rcently said his vote to authorize the war was a mistake. Biden's reaction:

"I think he did make a mistake. He voted for the war and against funding it, I think that was a mistake.

Sigh... so if Edwards had voted for both things, then it wouldn't have been a mistake? And yet, Biden manages to very nearly contradict himself with his very next statement:

"The only regret I had voting for the war is that I never anticipated how incompetent the administration would be in using the authority we gave them to avoid war.

Biden:

He said the American people are starting to "catch on" that they were at least partially "snookered and tricked," though he said that's not the administration's greatest failing.

Edwards:

The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president - and that I was being given by our intelligence community - wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.
full article @ daily kos

Joe Biden seems to like to stab fellow democrats in the back, at least when he isn't voting for a credit card company written bankrupcy bill.

UPDATE: BIDEN SUCKS THE ROOT

Rated 36% by NARAL, indicating a mixed voting record on abortion. (Dec 2003)
Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
Rated 60% by the ACLU, indicating a mixed civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Voted YES on restricting rules on personal bankruptcy. (Jul 2001)
Voted YES on $75M for abstinence education. (Jul 1996)

the whole record @ ontheissues.org


Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Alito believes woman have the right to sit down and shut up..... but not to an abortion.

Documents released yesterday revealed that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in 1985 that he personally believed the Constitution did not protect a woman’s right to an abortion:



Conservatives are arguing that what Alito thought 20 years ago doesn’t matter. But President Bush explicitly said that one of his considerations in nominating a Supreme Court justice is finding someone whose views would not change over a 20-year timeframe. From Bush’s 10/4/05 press conference:

Thirdly, I know her well enough to be able to say that she’s not going to change, that 20 years from now she’ll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today. … And that’s important to me. It was important to me when I picked Chief Justice Roberts; it’s important for me in picking Harriet Miers.

One can only assume that it was also important to him when he selected Judge Alito.

from think progress

Pretty much what everybody already assumed.


Kerry camp gets their underoos all wet

Boston Globe:

President Bush's Veterans Day broadside against Senator John F. Kerry, delivered in a major speech on the war in Iraq, was greeted with quiet cheer by those in the senator's camp who are laying the groundwork for his possible run for the presidency in 2008.

By singling out Kerry as the Democrats' leading Iraq war critic, aides to the Massachusetts Democrat said, the president confirmed Kerry's continuing prominence in national politics, something the senator and his aides have fought hard to maintain.

''Kerry is clearly one of the national leaders of the Democratic Party," said Jenny Backus, a Kerry political strategist. ''John Kerry has articulated a clear strategy for Democrats, and there's nothing more dangerous for Republicans than a united Democratic Party."

True, there's nothing more dangerous to Republicans thana united Democratic Party. Kerry isn't the one to do the uniting or lead a unified caucus. As nice as Kerry's conversion to the "let's get out of Iraq" camp might be, Kerry had his opportunity to lead on the war just a year ago and failed miserably.

Remember this from August 10, 2004?

On Friday, Bush challenged Kerry to answer whether he would support the war "knowing what we know now" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that U.S. and British officials were certain were there.

In response, Kerry said: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have."

from daily kos

It sure was sweet for Bush to throw Kerry a bone like that... must be a kind of belated thank you for the way Kerry ran his campaign.


NPR, tired of selling the war.... now peddling intelligent design.

interesting interview on NPR, on the Sternberg affair.

One of the interesting aspects was the reporter who did it: Barbara Bradly Hagerty. She's NPR's religion reporter. In general, assigning a religion reporter to these stories is a bad, bad idea—creationism stories are about attempts to insert religious thinking into the secular business of science and education, and they don't understand why we would find that objectionable. It's like sending a known neocon sympathizer to investigate the administration's rationale for war, and we just know that no responsible news organization would ever be insane enough to do that.

Digging a little deeper into Hagerty's background, one also discovers something interesting: connections to Howard Ahmanson.

More troubling still is her association with Howard Ahmanson's Fieldstead and Co. and Fieldstead Foundation. Ahmanson is a California millionaire who uses his trust fund to finance right-wing Christian, anti-gay, anti-evolution groups and politicians. He was previously associated with Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates a Biblically-based governement for the U.S.


from pharyngula via the news blog


Target: Low Cost Goods and Vagina Control

As you may recall, Target is letting its pharmacists refuse to fill your order for emergency contracptive pills (Plan B, as it's called) simply because they find your prescription immoral. Target is now saying that they'll fill your prescription in a "timely manner" at another pharmacy, or at their pharmacy at a later time (presumably when their holier-than-thou employee is on break).

I don't know about you, but when I go to the pharmacist, I don't want him sending me to another Target 40 miles away simply because he has religious issues with my prescription. It's none of his business what prescription I'm getting filled, and short of there being a glaring mistake in my prescription a la "It's a Wonderful Life" - i.e., instead of allergy pills someone gave me cyanide - it's none of his damn business passing religious judgment on my prescriptions, my illnesses, my prefered form of treatment, or me.

I already have a priest, and he doesn't work at Target, thank you.

But Target feels otherwise. In fact, Target is now claiming - quite incredibly - that its employees' religious fanaticism is covered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yes, apparently Target employees are allowed to not sell you things based on THEIR religion. That's an absurd, and rather dangerous, legal statement from Target.

So let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees:

- Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it."
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?



from america blog via the news blog

[title stolen from the news blog]


Monday, November 14, 2005

Why I always flip off the drivers of Hummers....

That's the headline on a New York Daily News story reporting on how SUVs have made New York City streets increasingly dangerous, especially for pedestrians.

According to the Daily News...

1) Pedestrians are twice as likely to be killed when they're hit by an SUV than when they're hit by a car.
2) While the total number of pedestrian deaths in NYC has fallen by 18% in the last five years, the number of deaths by SUV have surged 27%.
3) SUVs made up about 15% of the cars in New York last year—but caused 26% of pedestrian deaths from passenger vehicles.
4) When a car and an SUV collide and someone dies, 81% of the time the victim is the car driver.

When is someone going to take the logical and urgent next step, and file a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of SUVs? Irresponsible and dangerous in ways that their manufacturers surely knew, they have degraded the quality of all our lives.

from huffington post


Ring Wing Personalities: Urge to Self Distruct

As everyone knows by now, Bill O'Reilly created a bit of a fuss when during his radio show on November 8th he, well, endorsed an Al Qaeda attack on San Francisco:

Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I'm not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead."

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

Of course, that created a backlash. (Oh, and if you want to contribute to that backlash, this diary includes a list of the radio stations that carry O'Reilly's "show", as well as some of the sponsors of that show.) So O'Reilly responded Friday by clarifying that yes, he really meant exactly what he said:

I mean, look, everybody knows what's going on there. What I said isn't controversial. What I said needed to be said. I'm sitting here and I'm looking at a city that has absolutely no clue about what the world is. None. You know, if you had been hit on 9/11 instead of New York, believe me, you would not have voted against military recruting. Yet the left-wing, selfish, Land of Oz philosophy that the media and the city politicians have embraced out there is an absolute intellectual disgrace.
from daily kos

SONY not only owns your music... it owns your PC...

What is on the Sony CDs?

The CDs involved are loaded with a relatively new kind of content protection created by British company First 4 Internet. When a listener puts the album into a computer's CD drive, it pops up a license agreement. If the listener accepts, it installs the copy protection rootkit onto the hard drive.

The rootkit element of the software is used to hide virtually all traces of the copy protection software's presence on a PC, so that an ordinary computer user would have no way to find it. The software acts to limit the number of copies that can be made of the CD and prevents a computer user from making unprotected MP3s from the music.

from ZDnet


The Sony BMG software installs itself deeply inside a hard drive when a CD is played on a PC. The technology uses rootkit techniques to hide itself. Experts blasted the cloaking mechanism, saying it could be abused by virus writers. The first remote-control Trojan horses that take advantage of the veil provided by Sony BMG have surfaced.

from Cnet.com


Now the Legalese Rootkit: Sony-BMG's EULA
November 09, 2005

If you thought XCP "rootkit" copy-protection on Sony-BMG CDs was bad, perhaps you'd better read the 3,000 word (!) end-user license agreement (aka "EULA") that comes with all these CDs.

First, a baseline. When you buy a regular CD, you own it. You do not "license" it. You own it outright. You're allowed to do anything with it you like, so long as you don't violate one of the exclusive rights reserved to the copyright owner. So you can play the CD at your next dinner party (copyright owners get no rights over private performances), you can loan it to a friend (thanks to the "first sale" doctrine), or make a copy for use on your iPod (thanks to "fair use"). Every use that falls outside the limited exclusive rights of the copyright owner belongs to you, the owner of the CD.

Now compare that baseline with the world according to the Sony-BMG EULA, which applies to any digital copies you make of the music on the CD:

1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That's because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.

2. You can't keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a "personal home computer system owned by you."

3. If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids "export" outside the country where you reside.

4. You must install any and all updates, or else lose the music on your computer. The EULA immediately terminates if you fail to install any update. No more holding out on those hobble-ware downgrades masquerading as updates.

5. Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to "enforce their rights" against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this "self help" crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm.

6. The EULA says Sony-BMG will never be liable to you for more than $5.00. That's right, no matter what happens, you can't even get back what you paid for the CD.

7. If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.

8. You have no right to transfer the music on your computer, even along with the original CD.

9. Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling. The EULA forbids changing, altering, or make derivative works from the music on your computer.


So this is what Sony-BMG thinks we should be allowed to do with the music on the CDs that we purchase from them?

from the news blog


SONY is now facing lawsuit but they are still holding out.

Although Sony has done some minimal damage control -- last week it released a patch that revealed the once-hidden files -- it continues to refuse comment and makes it extremely difficult to obtain an uninstaller.

Sony has yet to post any links to the patch or uninstaller on its Web site.

In other Sony BMG news, a slew of security firms warned Thursday of the first appearance of malware that uses Sony's rootkit to hide from anti-virus programs.

Dubbed "Backdoor.Rycos" by Symantec and "Stinx.e" by Sophos, the Trojan arrives as an attachment to an e-mail purportedly from a British business publication. If the attachment is launched, the Trojan copies itself as "$sys$drv.exe" to the hard drive. Any file beginning with "$sys$" is automatically cloaked by the XCP rootkit.

"Sony's DRM copy protection has opened up a vulnerability which hackers and virus writers are now exploiting," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, in a statement Thursday. "We wouldn't be surprised if more malware authors try and take advantage of this."

The Trojan opens a backdoor on the compromised PC, and takes commands from its controller to, for instance, install additional files or delete data.

...

"What Sony is saying with this software is that 'Our intellectual property is more deserving of protection than your intellectual property,'" Kamber told the Post.

from yahoo news

Editorial Page Round Up: Washington Post sucks...

Cementing his place as a Bush media lackey of the first order, Fred Hiatt, the Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Post, reaches a new low - stooping to the New McCarthyism:

. . . Congress . . . pours most of its Iraq-related energy into allegations of manipulated intelligence before the war. "Those aren't irrelevant questions," says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). "But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war."

What Lieberman doesn't say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush's war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy -- to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.

Many of them understand that dwindling public support could force the United States into a self-defeating position, and that defeat in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States as well as for Mahdi and his countrymen. But the taste of political blood as Bush weakens, combined with their embarrassment at having supported the war in the first place, seems to override that understanding.

full article @ Daily Kos

Editorial Page Round Up: LA Times sucks.....

The Los Angeles Times announced a major shake-up of its op-ed page today. Gone are cartoonist Michael Ramirez and liberal columnist Robert Scheer.

In their place, you won’t find any committed progressives like Scheer. Instead, L.A. Times editors chose National Review contributing editor and “Liberal Fascism” author Jonah Goldberg. Below, some of our favorite Jonah jems, coming to a “liberal media” near you:

On McCarthy’s wisdom:

What makes McCarthyism so hard to discuss is that McCarthy behaved like a jerk, but he was also right.

Banning books:

Now, I’m not in favor of pulling Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn from libraries, but let’s at least give a small nod to the fact that some material actually can be banned from libraries without the sky falling.

A message to Katrina victims:

ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS – I think it’s time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you’re working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he’s not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen.

More:
In praise of “The Bell Curve”:

[Charles Murray crunches] the numbers with the sort of élan and sophistication we’ve come to expect from the author of “Losing Ground” and coauthor of “The Bell Curve.”

Anti-sodomy laws:

Santorum is probably right that anti-sodomy laws are constitutional.

Nazi appreciation for anti-war activism:

GOOD FOR CINDY [SHEEHAN]! She’s rallied the Nazis to her cause (obviously unintentionally, but it’s interesting how her message resonates in such quarters nonetheless).

And, of course, Goldberg’s explanation for why he can’t be troubled with serving in Iraq:

As for why my sorry a** isn’t in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give — I’m 35 years old, my family couldn’t afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few — ever seem to suffice.

Many more at Eschaton.

from thinkprogress blog


Sunday, November 13, 2005

Free Falling.... Bush in the polls

Hahaha:

Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Nov. 10-11, 2005. N=884 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 4.

"To begin, suppose the elections for U.S. CONGRESS were being held TODAY. Would you vote for the Republican Party's candidate or the Democratic Party's candidate for Congress in your district?" If other/unsure: "As of TODAY, do you LEAN more toward the Republican or the Democrat?" Options rotated

Republican

Democratic

Other/Unsure

36

53

11

full post @ daily kos


very popular right wing spin about now...

Argh:


Bush might want look back to successful predecessors for pointers. Other presidents have recovered from ratings slumps like the one Bush is in right now: Dwight Eisenhower came back after the Sherman Adams scandal; Ronald Reagan rebounded after Iran-Contra; Bill Clinton triumphed after Monica Lewinsky.



But Clinton never had a serious ratings slump because of the Lewinsky scandal. According to Gallup his lowest post-Monica revelation job approval rating was a shocking 57%.

Monica was a scandal for the media, not the country. It's time they came to understand that.

From atrios

This is the latest wingnuttery spin on bush's abysmal approval ratings... thought you would like the counter info if you didn't already have it.


We should start hearing more of this soon....

John Edwards:

I was wrong.

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price.
from atrios

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