The remaining Bush supporters are Bush-like

Wonder who still supports George Bush? According to AP, the profile of the remaining Bush supporters looks remarkably like Bush:

To see the type of person who still backs him, President Bush need only look in the mirror. The president fits the composite of today's Bush supporter: a conservative, white, Republican man, an evangelical Christian who goes to church regularly.

You can probably add homophobic (but maybe a closet case), pro-Iraq war (but not a veteran) and either rich or just not very bright. Read the rest of this post...

Young Republican National Federation Chair accused of sexually assaulting sleeping man

Folks, when it rains it pours...the GOP sexual hypocrite parade continues in all its glory. I give you...

Glenn Murphy, Jr., the recently elected chairman of the Young Republican National Federation (also the RNC Chair for Clark County, Indiana and formerly the YRNF Secretary) has been accused of sexually assaulting a sleeping man. Immediately following the accusation, he came up with an unrelated reason to resign, and the YRNF cleansed their website of his name.

Allegedly, Murphy and another YR were drunk and crashing at Murphy's sister's house. The other man apparently awoke in the morning to find Murphy giving him a non-consensual blow job. The Clark County (Indiana) Sheriff's Department is charging Murphy with "criminal deviate conduct", a Class B felony.

Taking Down Words, an Indiana blog, has been following this guy for some time. And guess what? Apparently this isn't the first time his mouth has ended up on someone's privates while they were asleep. Glenn Murphy has a prior arrest for sexual battery. Here's the 1998 Clark County police report. A snippet, for your entertainment.



More at Blue Indiana.

You can also check out the Google Cache of the Young Republicans site, which reveals the scrubbing of Murphy from their organization included the removal of recently created YouTube videos. If that link becomes dated, you can check out the screen shot here.

Read the rest of this post...

Olbermann moderating the AFL-CIO debate on MSNBC

Watching the Democratic debate from Chicago's Soldier Field. Keith Olbermann is the moderator.

The AFL-CIO is live blogging, too.

The questions so far have been about infrastructure, NAFTA and China. Real issues that affect real people and our economy.

All the candidates seem pretty fired up.

I find it harder to live-blog the Democratic debates because I tend to agree with most of what they say. Most. So, then it becomes a question of style and all the other things the political punditry get into a lather over. I hate playing that game. I just keep thinking that I'd take any of these Democrats over any of the Republicans. No question.

7:37 PM UPDATE: An Iraq related question from a union member wondering what will happen if we leave Iraq and al Qaeda ends up taking over anyway. Obama actually gave a pretty strong response and sounded confident. Hillary mentioned her "three point plan." She does stick to her talking points.

7:47 PM UPDATE: Dodd took a smack at Obama based on a question from Keith about a criticism made about Obama on foreign policy. Obama then gave a very, very strong response -- this was a good moment for him. Obama pointed out that he's getting criticized by people who got us into the mess in Iraq when we went after the people who didn't attack us. Sounded like Clinton's response got booed.

Next come questions from the audience. I've become a big fan of the non-traditional questioners. The YouTube debate evoked some of the best dialogue yet. Same for the Yearly Kos forum. Joan McCarter, a.k.a. McJoan, was fantastic. I think this development in the debates has been a positive development. The candidates can't give their usual canned and rehearsed responses -- well, they can, but do so at their peril.

7:56 UPDATE: First question from the widow of one of the miners who died at the Sago mine in WV last year. Her question about mine safety was to Biden...who got booed because he gave her a perfunctory answer, then started talking about foreign policy. Bad form, Joe.

8:02 UPDATE: Very compelling health care question to Edwards from a worker who lost his pension and his health care when his company filed bankruptcy. Edwards gave a pretty good answer, but he could have nailed this one...he then turned it into a rally cry for his campaign for all the picket lines he's walked with labor.

There must be something about the forum that is compelling the candidates to shout, because they are all talking really, really loud. Shouting even.

8:27 PM UPDATE: Barry Bonds?

8:34 PM UPDATE: Edwards finally gave his powerful health care answer...not to a health care question.

I could have done without that last question on the next campaign starting right after one of these folks was inaugurated...but by and large, this was a feisty forum. Read the rest of this post...

Brownback Keeps Attacking Mitt-Flop

Republican Presidential candidate Sam Brownback refuses to back off his attacks on Mitt Romney, saying that the facts on Romney's pro-choice credentials are clear. Normally, Republican spats don't interest me, but this is one to watch for two reasons.

First, Romney is trying to weasel out of positions he stated publicly. Flip-Flopping was the weapon of choice used against John Kerry in 2004, and it was effective because the Republicans never let up on it. It will be interesting to see if it works as well in a Republican primary.

Second, and of most interest, is that Brownback is making these attacks via internet video . I think we will see a lot more of candidates traded charges over the internet, not just on television. This is an early test of whether the internet is an effective place to make campaign attacks, and so it bears watching. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

It's been a while since I did a little Paris blogging. This was the view from my walk home last night from a bar in the Marais neighborhood of Paris. Click the image to see a larger version. (I just got an update-upgrade to my panoramic software - I think it's improved significantly. Have tried Photoshop's newest version of photomerge in CS3, don't love it. Side-by-side I think PTGui, my software, does better.)

And this was the view after dinner tonight near the Paris Opera.



Mom arrives tomorrow morning. I get to get up at 6:20am, which, well, let's just say that I don't usually start blogging till 10am, so that should give you some idea of my usual wake-up time. Mom and I are recreating her trip of 23 years ago when she visited me during my junior year abroad in Paris. Should be interesting :-) Read the rest of this post...

YearlyKos wrapup

I don't think there's really a need for yet another YKos meta-analysis (if I hear the phrase "coming of age" applied to the conference one more time I'm going to stick a fork in my leg), so rather than do a big overall thing, I'll just tell you, dear AMERICAblog readers, that I thought it was pretty great. One can always find something to complain about with an operation of this magnitude, but overall it came off tremendously.

The most important thing is how fast and how effectively a bunch of online politics nerds have been able to make our voices heard. A year ago YearlyKos was an oddity; this past weekend it attracted every major Democratic candidate for president, a host of Congressional members and candidates, and endless panels and discussions of bloggers, readers, academics, reporters, and activists. Joe and I had a great interview with Sam Seder, our respective panels were fun and engaging, and best of all, I got to meet many of you, the ones who make this site -- and this movement -- work.

I met some great new people, caught up with old friends, and added another few blogs to my already-full RSS feed, further dooming any attempt to expand my life past news/analysis consumption and the occasional pickup basketball game. It was also fun to do the mutual admiration game ("Your site is great, I love your writing!" "No, your blog is awesome, I read your stuff all the time!") with bloggers, commenters, and even a few journos, and, unsurprisingly, the community feeling was awesome. Even a year ago there was much more frustration with the Democratic party, so the weekend in many ways celebrated the successes of the past year while concurrently addressing the importance of forging ahead.

I hope those of you who were able to attend enjoyed yourselves, and that everybody who followed along via blog or news got a sense of how much impact we were all able to have. Next year should be even better, and I, for one, can't wait. Read the rest of this post...

"Anonymous" Bush officials lie to media about new FISA law.

Okay, the height of hypocrisy is anyone in the Bush administration challenging anything as "highly misleading." Liars don't have the standing to call anyone else a liar. But, that doesn't prevent the Bush team from doing it anyway. Because everyone in the Bush administration knows that the media will dutifully report their lies:

The White House issued a statement that criticized as “highly misleading” a front-page article in The New York Times on Monday that described the legislation as having “broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.”

The White House took issue not with the article’s account of the new law’s provisions, but instead with its characterization of the measure as having “broadly” strengthened the government’s authority.

In a telephone briefing for reporters on Monday, officials said the administration had set out to resolve a “narrow” technical problem that had called into question whether intelligence officials needed to get a court warrant to intercept foreign-to-foreign communications that happened to pass through American telecommunication switches. But in fact the legislation as enacted not only provides that no warrant is needed in such a situation but also goes further, in giving the administration discretion to eavesdrop on foreign communications that might involve Americans.

The officials who participated in the briefing spoke on condition of anonymity, saying only that doing so would allow them to talk more freely.

One more time we see just how boldly the Bush administration is willing to lie. Some anonymous officials, probably including Stephen Hadley, had an a conference call to challenge the NY Times.

Eric Lichtblau, who wrote this article, basically discounts what the anonymous White House official said. When he wrote "But in fact....", Lichtblau was intimating that what he heard wasn't based on facts. In other words, the anonymous Bush sources lied and misled. You won't hear or read those actual words from any reporter -- and the Bushies know that. Instead, most of the White House press corps will dutifully report what they heard, even if they know it's a lie. That's what these reporters always do.

Think Progress has the video of Glenn Greenwald discounting the Bush administration's position:

Today on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon.com, debunked the White House’s claim that the new FISA law requires “court approval” prior to spying on an “individual located in the United States.” In fact, as Greenwald explained, the law now allows the government to “listen to our conversations, read our e-mails, with no connection to terrorism, with no proof that anyone has ever done anything wrong” — without judicial oversight.

I'd trust Glenn Greenwald over any Bush administration official -- anonymous or not -- any day on any issue, but especially on this. Read the rest of this post...

Gibson radio show producer: Edwards 'whored his wife's cancer as a fundraising gimmick'

NOTE FROM JOHN: Someone needs to make a list of which companies advertise this week on John Gibson's show on FOX and then contact them all and ask them why they're sponsoring this kind of hate. And big deal if it was his radio show - it's the same guy they're sponsoring. Would they sponsor David Duke so long as he were only hateful on his radio show?

This is bottom-feeder disgusting stuff. Look at this exchange between Fox News shill John Gibson and his exec producer "Angry Rich". What class. (Media Matters):

GIBSON: Our John Gibson program fraud alert today focuses on the biggest fraud running for president, and that takes some doing. We're talking about the Breck Girl, Silky, the former senator from North Carolina, the baron of a 28,000-square-foot manse, the protector of the poor while ensconced on a pillow of 100 million dollars.

ANGRY RICH: A man who whored his wife's cancer as a fundraising gimmick.

This is how they appeal to the Base. The right wing cannot sell its ideas (and certainly not its values, given the endless string of sexual hypocrites), so they just get in the gutter and fling excrement like this on the air.

The larger issue here is the misogyny of the Right -- the continual attacks on John Edwards, the whole feminizing-as-an-insult routine says a lot about their utter contempt toward women. They want to control their wombs, their sexuality, and their independence. In their book the best way to demean a political opponent is to feminize male candidates or gay-bait them (as they do with Hillary Clinton, since clearly the right is fixated on lesbian-baiting her).

John Gibson needs to be on a couch. Read the rest of this post...

American Family Association tries its hand at Muslim fear-baiting

This is from OneNewsNow, the fundie news aggregation site of the American Family News Network, one of the many tentacles of Don and Tim Wildmon's "Christianist" gay-bashing American Family Association:

Michigan city could become first in U.S. under Muslim control.

Doesn't it make you visualize 9/11 terrorists overrunning the municipal government, taking hostages? The news is actually more mundane.

A Detroit-area newspaper says the results of Tuesday's primary could lead to Hamtramck, Michigan, becoming the first city council in the U.S. to be controlled by Muslims.

The Detroit News says there are four Muslims in the Tuesday primary. If they are among the candidates who win and go on to run in the November election, they would have a chance to join a fifth Muslim who already sits on the six-member council and is up for re-election in 2009.

Democracy in action and religious diversity are apparently too threatening for the AFA, an organization that former staff attorney Joe Murray said in his interview with me, harbors anti-Catholic views as well, despite fundraising appeals to the conservative Catholic demographic: "During a weekly mandatory devotional at AFA, one top AFA executive made the statement that Catholics were not Christians (being a Catholic? this was news to me)."

He also noted:

[W]hile in the south my Christianity was constantly challenged by employees at AFA, as well as folks in the South. There is a belief among some fundamentalist Christians that Catholics are not Christian, and while such a position may not be institutionalized in AFA, it definitely runs through the minds of some of its employees. Why people feel the need to seek approval of their Christianity from fellow men is beyond me.

...Obviously, nobody can determine if a person is Christian enough-the last time I checked, such a decision belonged to a higher power.

It's no surprise to see that Muslims are painted with a terror-alert brush by the fear-mongering AFA. Read the rest of this post...

As Iraq government collapses, US deaths are surging

It's getting even uglier in Iraq, if that's possible.

The Bush-backed government is falling apart as Reuters tell us:

Off the battlefield, Iraq's crumbling national unity government was in crisis after five secularist ministers said they would boycott cabinet meetings until Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki addressed demands they first gave him in February.

The move means that 17 ministers, nearly half the cabinet, have now quit or are boycotting government meetings. The main Sunni Arab bloc pulled out last week and ministers loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr withdrew in April.

Meanwhile, our soldiers continue to bear the brunt of Bush's failed Iraq policy. U.S. deaths are spiking:

August, however, is now on track to be one of the bloodiest months of the year, suggesting a resurgence in militant attacks.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb hit their convoy south of TBaghdad on Saturday, the military said, while a soldier was killed in the capital on Monday by a powerful roadside bomb of a type Washington says is being supplied to Shi'ite militias in Iraq by Iran.

Four other soldiers were killed on Monday in Diyala province, where U.S. troops have launched a summer campaign against militants using the area as a staging ground for car bomb attacks in Baghdad.

President George W. Bush has warned that August will be a bloody month for U.S. forces in Iraq as militants try to influence the debate over the war in Washington, where Democrats in Congress want troops pulled out within months.

So, Bush is finally right about one thing: August is already a bloody month. It's one of the worst things that he could be right about.

Like Bush, the Republican presidential candidates claim to be seeing progress in Iraq. Is this what they're talking about? Read the rest of this post...

Giuliani's daughter backs Obama

Ouch. Rudy's family values bit him in the *ss again.

There's one vote that Rudy Giuliani definitely can't count on in his 2008 presidential bid: his own daughter's. According to the 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani's Facebook profile, she's supporting Barack Obama.

On her profile, she designates her political views as "liberal" and -- until this morning -- proclaimed her membership in the Facebook group "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)." According to her profile, she withdrew from the Obama group at 6 a.m. Monday, after Slate sent her an inquiry about it.

...It's not news that Rudy and his two children, Caroline and her 21-year-old brother Andrew, have a rocky relationship. Caroline and Andrew are the children of Donna Hanover, Rudy's second wife. In March, Andrew, who is a  junior at Duke, told the New York Times that he and his father had been estranged for some time, and he has spoken candidly about his objections to Giuliani's marriage to Judith Nathan. And after the wedding, the Times reported, Giuliani also stopped attending Caroline's high-school events. Though he went to her high-school graduation, he left without speaking to her and did not join in the post-graduation family celebration, according to the New York Daily News.

Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Had dinner with my friend, Michael, who goes to Minneapolis for business fairly often. He confirmed what we've all been hearing on the news: the collapsed bridge is a major thoroughfare. Without it, traffic will be a major mess. On the Today Show this morning, Ann Curry reported that the bridge won't be reconstructed til the "end of next year."

So, my friend had an interesting point. The GOP Convention is in Minneapolis next summer, but Minneapolis will be without a major traffic artery. What will the Republicans do? Abandon Minneapolis? Or pump extra money in to fix the faster? You know those GOPers aren't going to a city where they will all be stuck in traffic. My bet is the Bush administration spends a ton of extra federal money to get the bridge done in time for the GOP convention. That'll make New Orleans wish they were hosting the Republicans.

Infrastructure only matters to Republicans when it affects them.

So, with that, thread away. Read the rest of this post...

GOP House leader John Boehner cares about leaks when the other guy is doing the leaking

No surprise there. Read the rest of this post...