Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer and Brad Friedman

The question (video below) in the CNN/YouTube seems to be about "standardizing" voting systems around the country. The only one given the opportunity to answer it is New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson, who should have hit this out of the park since he signed a bill to outlaw the use of DRE touch-screen systems after disaster in NM in the 2004 election.

Though his answer uses the phrase "touch stones" (we'll chalk it up to nervousness, we guess) and he goes on to use the phrase "verifiable paper trail" (instead of paper ballot), he's clearly speaking about actual ballots since he calls for those "verifiable paper trails" with "optical scanners."

Richardson is theoretically trying to break out from the pack. He ought to be able to use his status as the only candidate to have actually outlawed dangerous, disenfranchising DRE touch-screens to distinguish himself from the others. It might help, however, if he got his words right. But at least someone spoke to democracy, finally, in the midst of this absurd Presidential Election campaign.

Anybody else in the pack care to speak up and stand up in favor of democracy? Anyone? Bueller? We're waiting.

The video of the question and answer, appx 1 minute, follows in full...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

"I think we in journalism have got to stop being so scared of being unobjective and to start focusing on our job which is to question, question, question," Chris Matthews told Jay Leno this week. Welcome aboard, Chris. Took ya long enough.

Leno begins his July 17, 2007 interview with Matthews by saying that the Hardball host has been "all fired up" this week. Well, that certainly describes Matthews in the video below. While he does take a couple backhanded, albeit deserving, shots at Tim Russert, he focuses his wrath primarily on the Bush administration, adding that "this crowd wasn't even exactly elected, you know."

While Matthews glosses over his own culpability when speaking of the failures of the press, he does deliver a powerful indictment on the Bushies and their vast propaganda campaign against the American people. Here's a particularly good rant:

In the last part of the interview Leno shifts the conversation to the 2008 presidential election and Matthews predicts a Hillary/Giuliani showdown. The video follows in full...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Poet, performance artist and teacher, Sekou Sundiata, passed away on July 17, 2007. He was 58. The video at left is of Sundiata performing a poem about racism that aired on tonight's Bill Moyers Journal. More on Sundiata's life in today's New York Times.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio, and David Bender had a great discussion about RFK Jr.'s Live Earth speech on the July 14, 2007 Ring of Fire on Air America Radio. The show opened with a laughing Papantonio asking, "So Bobby, what in the hell did you do this last weekend, my God, hate-mail is flying, Hannity is attacking you, I mean what's up?" You can hear RFK Jr. reply that he "just told the truth, man, just told the truth" in the ten minute audio clip from the radio program (below). The video of the Live Earth speech can also be viewed here at BRAD BLOG.

And there is plenty more truth telling in the Ring of Fire audio clip (above) which includes RFK Jr. elaborating on his Live Earth comments about treasonous corporations:

RFK Jr.'s appearance on Glenn Beck, also at BRAD BLOG, is also discussed briefly. Finally, Bender repeats RFK Jr.'s call to fight lying pundits like Hannity and Beck through their advertisers (many of which can be seen in this video mashup).

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

A slightly edited (for time) Jay Leno interview of Bill Maher (approximately 10 minutes) follows a very political and oftentimes funny Leno monologue (5 minutes). Subjects covered by Leno include Senator Vitter's DC Madam problems, Condi Rice and Dick Cheney golfing, Bill's backing of Hillary for president, Scooter Libby, and Al Gore. Meanwhile, Maher worries that Democrats might blow the 2008 election by nominating Hillary. And while Maher claims to never have endorsed a candidate, he calls Edwards/Obama a "no-lose ticket" and a "winning ticket."

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Bill O'Reilly goes off the deep end tonight (video at left) because of alleged comments his producers claim to have found "on a vicious far-left website called the DailyKos, one of the worst examples of hatred that America has to offer." O'Reilly proceeds to take issue with Jet Blue for sponsoring the DailyKos convention (with 10 plane tickets!) which, coincidentally, is this week in two weeks, August 2-5. At one point O'Reilly makes some rather unfortunate comparisons with the DailyKos:

UPDATE/ADDENDUM FROM BRAD: As dKos diarist "mcjoan" a pointed out over there in advance of O'Reilly's big hate scoop, perhaps No Spin Boy may have a gripe against dKos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga that he failed to mention in his hit piece. "Markos led the way in getting the Democratic presidential candidates to boycott the Fox debate," she writes, "and we're going to be having a Democratic presidential candidates forum at YearlyKos."

There's that, and the fact that dKos is only the largest community in the blogosphere, either Left or Right, and a grave threat to folks like Fox "News" and O'Reilly, since they have a habit of countering their spin with actual facts.

And most importantly, O'Reilly forgot to mention that the comments he alluded to on the site could well have been posted by anyone, since it's an open site. A question one might ask then (one that's at least as responsible as O'Reilly's ridiculous attack): Did Bill O'Reilly or one of his producers post those "hateful" comments at dKos themselves? Perhaps someone should ambush them to find out. Without evidence either way, I'll just go ahead and say O'Reilly did it himself. Why not? O'Reilly has no journalistic credibility and he's got the biggest show on cable "news." Perhaps we need to start making stuff up too!

FURTHER UPDATE FROM BRAD 7/17/07: Daily Kos' "DarkSyde" responds directly to O'Reilly segment, patiently explaining exactly what Billo doesn't grasp about the progressive blogosphere. "ShaunMcDonnell," a dKos diarist who claims to be a "Right-Leaning Lurker" takes O'Reilly to task for his hit piece calling it "easy" and a "cheap shot". And Kos himself posts a few of the pieces of hate mail (ironically enough) from O'Reilly's fans that he's received since the story ran yesterday.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

UPDATE: The original video had one error identifying Frederick Kagan as a co-founder of PNAC. In fact, it was Robert Kagan, Freddie's brother who co-founded PNAC with General Kristol. Freddie is merely a rank and file member of PNAC and signatory to some of the reports generated by the neocon think tank. (hat tip Robert Danow)

Neoconservative co-founder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and author of Bush's recent Iraq "Surge" plan, Frederick Kagan, shared a virtual propagandafest with Brit Hume on Fox 'News' Sunday yesterday. BRAD BLOG covered the entire charade that was Kagan's Plan for Success back in January along with a timeline evidencing Freddie's ever-changing call for a troop surge which began with 50,000 additional troops and ended up with either 20,000 or 33,000 more soldiers depending on the day of the week.

Perhaps the only thing more amazing than Kagan's lack of honesty and empathy for our troops is Fox's audacity for continuously giving Kagan and his warmongering kin, including "General" Bill Kristol, a platform to spout their neoconservative rhetoric. If Fox 'News' had any integrity whatsoever it would implement a Mendoza Line type requirement for its pundits. In baseball, all one has to do to stay even with the Mendoza Line is get a hit 1 out of every 5 at bats. Imagine if Fox made it a requirement that Kagan had to be right on at least 1 of 5 matters that he weighs in on. Actually, as far as I know, if the minimum requirement were merely to be right once he wouldn't make it on the air.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

During the "Live Earth" concerts this past weekend, in one of the great speeches (both video and text transcript here) in recent American history, activist and radio host Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (his other sites here and here) called Glenn Beck and other right wing pundits "flat-earthers" and "corporate toadies" for continuously lying to the American people about global warming. Tonight, RFK, Jr. appeared on the "Face-Off" segment of Beck's CNN Headline News show and (in a heavily edited interview, see "UPDATE" at end of this story) continued to call out the host, stating at one point, "Your sentence should be that you should have to read the IPCC Report from cover to cover and I don't mean this with any particular disrespect, but I don't believe you have a long attention span."

The "IPCC Report" referenced by Kennedy is a report on global warming, recently issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body which "assess[es] on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation," according to their website.

Beck then followed up with a clever retort about Kennedy's "even shorter attention span" because the longtime environmental advocate-turned-media critic had failed to define "fascist" for the host. Kennedy quickly replied:

After more Beck antics, RFK Jr. closed by prescribing that Beck "Go back to journalism school, number one" and "number two, that you read the IPCC Report with somebody standing over your shoulder to help you."

UPDATE FROM BRAD: I spoke with someone from RFK's office late yesterday, who said the interview with Beck was originally much longer, but that it was greatly edited by air time. Indeed, the version of the video posted by Alan above reveals a number of uneven cuts where, clearly, the interview had been edited. Big time.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are caught on tape today at the NAACP Democratic presidential candidates forum seemingly making anti-democratic comments about shrinking the democratic field in future debate settings. (Video available at left.)

Fox "News", who filed the report during Brit Hume's Special Report on Thursday, included sub-titles for the "overheard" post-forum conversation between Clinton and Edwards. They also managed to get in several cheapshots against a number of other Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama.

As subtitled by Fox during the video clip, the exchange between Clinton and Edwards purportedly went as follows:

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Harold A. Schaitberger, the General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters does not pull any punches in his smackdown of GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani (see video). Discussing a video released by the Fire Fighters PAC today, Schaitberger says that fire fighters are dead today because of Rudy and that the former Mayor was far more concerned about recovering gold at Ground Zero than he was missing fire fighters.

Also see the Rudy Giuliani Urban Legend Site

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave one of the great speeches in recent history at Live Earth where he spoke truth to power to our "rotten politicians" who are "nothing more than corporate toadies" for "villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of American interest and ahead of the interest of all of humanity."

RFK jr. also offered a couple of ways to combat the corporations, politicians, "slick public relations firms and their phony think tanks" and "crooked scientists" including getting involved in the political process and boycotting the companies that advertise on programs where the corporate toadies consistently lie about global warming. Specifically, RJK Jr. suggests:

This mashup is produced entirely from the July 9th Hannity & Colmes and provides consumers with a list of corporations to avoid as well as evidences a number of typical Sean Hannity lies.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Following on yesterday's Michael Moore smackdown of Wolf Blitzer, Sanjay Gupta, and CNN specifically and the MSM in general, Moore and Gupta had it out tonight on Larry King Live after Moore fact-checked Gupta's so-called "Reality Check" from the evening before.

The Moore/Gupta appearance is below, broken into three parts...

Part 1

Parts 2 and 3 of the Moore/Gupta appearance on Larry King Live follow below...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

The continuation of the well publicized brouhaha (ed note: ass kicking!) between Michael Moore and Wolf Blitzer may not provide the fireworks witnessed around the country yesterday but it is still a worthy watch. Blitzer is considerably more conciliatory (ed note: tamed!) this time around referring to parts of Moore's new movie Sicko as "powerful" on more than one occasion. Moore, however, saved the best for last with a classic comment to Blitzer at the very end of the segment that had me laughing out loud and should not be missed.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Citizens for Legitimate Government has begun posting the DC Madam phone records online. Thus far CLG has managed to put online phone records with billing dates 08/22/06 and 12/22/05. I have already gone through the shorter August 06 list and added my notes here. CLG will be maintaining and posting a master list which will be updated as citizens from around the country weigh in. Well, what are you waiting for? Get to work!