Good Morning, Sounds as if Mr. Erickson has tapped into a bit of reality. I guess that is always a good thing. And I heard McC. still lecturing Obama this morning on all his Iraq mistakes.

Yes, but we must thank MM for the new, splendoriferous sobriquet for Tex Betsy: Dumpster Muffin! YAY!!

mornin’ all.

Splendiferous. Sorry. My left hand doesn’t know how to spell….

Blech. U.S. Olympic team standing behind Georgie ib the Rose Gardern being forced to listen to a stream of inanities. What kinda reward is that?

Oh yeah – for GWB, the word “athlete has three syllables. (”ath-u-letes”)

Sounds as if Mr. Erickson has tapped into a bit of reality.

Didn’t Jane do a talk/debate with him? If it’s the same guy I’m thinking of, he was polite, well-spoken, and suffering from only occasional Tourette’s-like bursts of wingnut, evidence-free outbursts.

Color me skeptical, but when the invited speakers openly loathe the Republican candidates at a conference organized to publicly celebrate wingnuttiness, you’ve got issues. Big ones.

i’m pretty sure that many of the dem candidates are opening loathed (or even just seriously criticized) by a good many progressive activists. all that means is that they weren’t the ones invited to speak. see for example, glenn greenwald:

I was supposed to be on 2 extremely good panels and they rejected both of them — one in particular did not sit well with me at all. It was a panel to examine the state of Bush lawbreaking in the next administration — what should be done about it, the implications, etc. Moderated by Majorie Cohn of the National Lawyer’s Guild, it was going to have Daniel Ellsberg, John Dean and Liz Holtzman — 3 of the most important figures of the Watergate scandal.

When they said it was rejected — and past Yearly Kos conferences didn’t have rejections, as far as I know – it gave no reason. It was a snide “Thank-you-for-asking-but-no” form email. Majorie, who put together the panel, was offended and furious and I don’t blame her. Why would that panel be rejected? When I tried to get answers from NN, I got a lot of amorphous nonsense — “We are trying to emphasize the role local bloggers play” — “We needed to cut down on the number of panels and had a lot of great submissions,” etc. I can’t imagine any conference — let alone a Netroots one — rejecting that panel.

The other panel I was on — a foreign policy panel with Matt Yglesias, Laura Rozen, AJ Rossmiller, and Richard Clarke — to discuss whether there is a bipartisan foreign policy consesus and if it’s good or bad — was also rejected.

i think there are bigger issues than speakers open loathing the candidates. and that’s when some kinds of serious criticisms aren’t permitted.

There should be no self-esteem crisis among the right-wing blogosphere,” Ms. Malkin told the audience.

My bold
Because the Right wing blogosphere does not exist.

Morning

Be leery of the possum approach

Seems like Dobson is flipping and coming out in support of McCain – you know the guy with the strong family values

This was meant as a bit of cheery amusement for a Monday — didn’t expect to get into inter-conference nitpickery this soon in the thread, I have to say. But I don’t see anywhere in the post where I indicated perfection on the other side either, eh? It’s just very, very odd to see the Wurlitzer’s vaunted “on message” enforcement squad so off-key in the same place at a conference they deliberately ginned up as a competing venue for the glory of conservatism.

Which, frankly, says a lot about where they are at the moment, eh?

Have to say…I do not know if it’s the same guy. If so, maybe he has been going thru early steps of an intervention. There may be a big demand for “accepting things I cannot change” among the Re-Pubs. Let’s keep hoping.

We be back?

Yep, up and running again. Thanks for everyone’s patience…

Yessss! We be back!

When the hamsters go on strike, i break out in hives egad.

no not a pretty sight. but this site is ;->

Is there a right wing blogosphere that is able to sustain itself without wing nut welfare? I heard Malkin was rich did she make that money blogging or was that her own money to start with?
I think Dave said Malkin had a few hundred at her convention somehow I doubt that they are paying her bills.

Yep, up and running again. Thanks for everyone’s patience…

No problem, but now I gotta run *g*.

on my teevee a minute or two ago there were pictures of Obama meeting with both Maliki and Talabani. Did he just one-up McLame?

Also, Maliki’s press guy is now saying that the correct time-frame for withdrawal is sometime after 2010 (!?). Can’t figure out if the press guy is himself a Republican, or has merely fielded some angry, panicky calls from U.S. Republicans…

gotta run – bbl.

Morning Christy and pups.

OT but just have to share.

Folks. Some time, go over to HuffPo and check out the pix of Obama “over there”.

Suffice to say, sitting with other leaders, both military and furrin’, in your shirt-sleeves, at a meeting table;

playing hoops and signing autographs with the troops;

these things make for absolutely priceless photo-ops!

Obama’s not one for playing dress-up games, thank heaven.

Good on him and his advisors.

Another month of summer doldrums and this election will commence ta start commencing. The polls will be meaningful- the teevee money will start rollin out ta the greedy teevee stations–all hell will break lose. Then we’ll see who has their ground game in order.

Anybody seen any McCain bumper stickers? I’ve seen one. One.

selise at 7–i would have liked to have seen both of those.

here’s the conference agenda from this year’s netroots
http://www.netrootsnation.org/agenda-2008

when i looked at it the other day, nothing stood out like gg’s panels would have, to me anyway.

and jane canterbury political advisor from NOW is on cspan-3 talking about candidates and races state by state, with numbers.

bbl

I was reading AdmiralNaismith last night, over at the Great Orange One, and this line jumped out at me:

‘Democrats love rules. We love the SPROINGGGG!!! sound that they make when you bend them as far as you can and then let go.’

Maybe we need a bit more SPROINGGGG!!! in our lives, instead of wishing for perfection in our politicians?

some people might not want Dobson’s “support”. just sayin’…

how much is it worth? whew.

McBush fucks up again- this is getting to be frightening:

“Asked by Diane Sawyer whether the “the situation in Afghanistan in precarious and urgent,” McCain responded: “I think it’s serious. . . . It’s a serious situation, but there’s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I’m afraid it’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border.”

But as ABC’s Rick Klein noted: “Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border. Afghanistan and Pakistan do.”

and canterbury’s info might be worth seeing later on the cspan website-or if it’s re-run. she gives very specific status of each race in each state….almost passed it over, until i realized how much info she was throwing out. wow….must have taken her days to write it up, let alone how long it took to gather all of the info…..i’d recommend it. i am recommending it.

Sounds like a certain failing conservative movement needs sessions with Stuart Smalley.

just got around to reading your fine, pithy post, Redd.

Goodgollymolly! Should have had a spew alert! Cleanup in aisle 25 please.
*blush

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: McBush is going to be our sides BEST spokesman.

Boxturtle (The few Obama ads I’ve seen in Ohio do not impress me)

As goes Ohio- so goes the election. The odds of either candidate winning the white house without winning Ohio are small.

sorry, didn’t mean to offend.

League of Conservation Voters is endorsing Obama. Surprised? heh.

All that talent, and he’s green too.

Well of course he is.

Is he just geographically challenged, or is it the Iraqnophilia. Maybe the border is near Czechoslovakia…

I think he’s just fuckin ignorant- and that’s a scary thing for a prez. He has handlers following him everywhere just to keep him from fucking up like this and he STILL does it daily.

The guy is too old and stupid to be president.

seen one too. One. Up in Chris Carney’s district.

Curious here. Does Malkin have her sneer patented? It truly is quite unique and effective at causing a reaction in our household. ymmv

I really don’t understand why Obama isn’t up by 70% — even with the MSM running his campaign.

I have been successful in avoiding this Malkin person. I see no reason to change my approach to her.

By ‘him’ I mean McCain’t

link, please.

d’oh! reeeeely?! heh. some old bat’s been claimin’ that on the toobz for some time now. why! there she is agin, right in my mirror!

Was it parked in Carney’s driveway?

Not a question of offending, more a question of sometimes people need to step back and laugh at some of the absurdity. Otherwise, all we have is ranting, crankiness, and seething. And, frankly, that’s just no way to spend your life day in and day out.

Sometimes, you just need a good laugh. Thought this would be good for one on a Monday morning. And, frankly, it’s weird that two big mouths in the wingnut arena would be off message like that when there was press coverage. It needed to be noted. Because they are all about the steadfastly on message no matter what malarky. Something’s up…

Pittsburgh is getting quite a few of them — we see them on the local Pittsburgh station that we get on our cable.

It was on an oldish SUV on the road. Now that I’ve seen his district, I think he deserves it. *g*

I also find him very smug and patronizing.

There is nothing worse than a know-nothing know-it-all.

-G

linklinkS, please

there. fixed it for ya.

just type bare minimum into goo gel, but then, u knew that. yes?

So will we all be at next years’ NN in Pittsburgh? It’s a cheap (but long) train ride from here. At least today it’s cheap—can’t say about a year from now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..14013.html

yes, yes, YES and YYYYYYEEEEESSSSSSSSS!

Thank you Redd.

i was really down in dumps last week yet again.

now i’s up and at em, sorta.

ready for duty ma’am. and much obliged.

I do hope residents of the Redd household are doing better this week. ;->

Now that Obama is in Iraq he’ll be able to get a firsthand look at the troubled border with Pakistan.

-G

I’ll second that in Pgh. Although, by comparison, there are way more Obama and Hillary stickers — even here in reddish-purple land. We saw a lot more W stickers at this point in 2004, too. McCain has been here a lot lately, too.

It’s a beautiful train ride, though. I’ve done that one — lovely to sit back and relax. Treat yourself to a business class ticket and you get hot tea and a comfy seat the whole way.

The Dumpster Muffin has arrived!
Morning y’all.

Come on Pups Don’t be SHY Digg this POST! 44 comments and everyone is too shy to Open the Digg up???

my guess is that there will be a car load of bloggers from Philly going. Could be a really fun train ride.

that’s the 1st-line defensive posture of – well – a fella like u described…

leave ‘im be & he’ll continue destroying his own campain. hee hee.

u barely need to lift a finger, except to make sure his gaffes are aired in public on a regular basis.

piece a cake.

our biggest danger is getting smug, ourselves.

I’m waiting for the first hothead moment caught on tape. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop!

Democracy Now interviewing peace activists who have been surveiled and listed as terrorists for demonstrating

patience, grasshopper. don’t want to spook the opposition too too much, too early. just pretend to be poking along mindin’ yer own bidness. and then smush em on election day. eh?

For a guy running on his deep understanding of world affairs, McBush has been a bit unimpressive so far.

for a 7 hour trip it would be worth it. Now all they need is to add wireless onboard!

Best not celebrate too soon, the righty beast still has many levers to
pull… Greenwald is right about the new milquetoast tendency of the
left blogosphere as exemplified by those panel cancellations. We need to
keep taking names and kicking asses, it’s fun!

yeah! still, there are some major “keepers” out there on the toobz.
Ariana has tapped into some classic photos, and video’s there, virtually ALL of it showing, basically, a confused old man.

if he weren’t so mean and foul-mouthed, i could almost feel sorry for him.

as it is, tho, i got nuthin but contempt for the creep.

they’re gonna need a whole lot more Smalley after seeing this

all their Dukakis in a tank prayers gone unanswered, teehee

WHY RWC, your grasp of the subject matter is absolutely stunning this morning. You may go to the head of the class!
*clap clap clap*

If Bush’s legacy is that he destroyed the conservative movement, then that’s a legacy that future generations will applaude. No wonder he thinks that history will judge him kindly.

You think Mr. Redstate has it bad, here is the whole state of Neveda:
From WSJ

Nevada GOP Cancels Convention, Opts for Conference Call

Brad Haynes reports on the presidential race.

Citing a lack of interest, the Nevada Republican Party has called off its state convention and will instead pick its delegates to the national convention by private conference call.

The state party broke up its original convention in April when supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention in September. Party officials tried to reconvene on July 26, but they needed a quorum of 675 and received only 300 RSVPs, according to local reports.

…

Iraqis say they hope troops can be out when Obama promises they will be- McBush says that Obama is a foreign policy disaster cause he wasn’t in favor of “The Surge” which seems to be the McBush Pony’s one trick.

Yay!

Anyone remember what the PURPOSE of said surge was at the time?

That “lack of interest” just makes my day. And it about says it all for the Repubs this year.

McBush:

“Surge-blah blah- surge, surge surge, blah blah, Iraq/Pakistan border, blah blah- surge surge surge!”

Foreign policy expertise on display.

“Let’s go surge- surge across the floor- Sur-GIN- Sur- Gin

Well bless my purge- how I love’s ta Surge”

I can see the ads now:
“When ipecac just doesn’t do the job
Reach for MalkinSneer(TM)!”

Some do- but not McBush of course.

Wow! Amtrak Philadelphia to Pittsburgh is 7 hours?

Still, it would be worth it I’d think. I commuted most of Y2K Hartford to Penn Station in on Monday AM and home on Friday PM. It was roughly 3 hours each way. Sit back and read or visit with other travelers for the time.

(I am a big fan of train travel).

I like train travel too- too bad we don’t have any of it in this country…

Get on a passenger train and pull over ta let the milk train pass.

To allow time for a political reconciliation within the various factions of Irak. Oh and to pass the Oil Giveaway Plan so that the US could control all the Irak oil with limited oversight from the Iraki gov’t.

Not to mention the coal train

Just looked at the schedule. There’s on train/day going from NY to Pittsburgh and from the closest station to me it’s almost 7 hours. But think of the bloggers along the way. We could easily book a couple of train cars and fill them. Start the party early and end late.

I wonder if they book cars for groups?

oh goodie! One with his smile, military ride & companions, and his sleeves rolled up. Yee Haw! Nice catch, cbl!

IIRC is was to give the govt. breathing space to get it’s act together and actually start to, er, function.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/147763

Link to great story contrasting McBush and Obama’s views on international relations. Obama called a “realist”-

Vagina Air Force says turn that frown upside down !

sorrry, couldn’t resist, was over there and other sites to see if they’ve started to call the good general Betrayus yet :D

Amtrak rents the track for passenger travel. The tracks are “owned” by the freight train companies, whatever their names are these days (written by someone who used to play on the L&N tracks that ran behind the house when I was a child)

good on ya. gonna be no shortage of material. eh? keep em comin’. u have a gift. ;->

1,711 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen selise and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

I too am EXTREMELY upset at the Obamacons and their arrogant timidity…at least I hope it’s timidity. I am also concerned about Obama’s ability to co opt Howard Dean and the DNC…it seems that the money machine that Obama built offa the Dean model, enabled Obama ta opt out of public financin’ and now that he’s got the nomination he’s dismantling it in such a way as to keep it from bein’ restored for a real progressive, grassroots candidate or candidates. I hope Dean can recapture the netroots money machine and leverage off efforts like Act Blue ta keep the party structure insulated from the White House to a healthy extent.

It’s time to put the heat on Dean and the DNC to turn the treasure ship around toward Senate and House candidates who need the help and ain’t gunna get it from the DSCC and the DCCC.

And it’s time ta start organizin’ for a block party outside the Denver convention center.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE WAR ISN’T OVER…IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STRUGGLE, STUPID!!

It seems it would still be less aggravation involved then driving by yourself or fighting an airline. Parking at the train station tends to be fairly inexpensive as well if you need to leave your car.

Email or call them to find out. *grin* I’m pretty sure Amtrak has some group rates, as i’ve seen small groups go for field trips on it on my last trip to Chicago.

I want more train travel here too. As it is, it’s going to take years to reclaim the system from the freight companies that have all the priority nowadays. Bleagh. I went to england when i was 21 and got spoiled by British Rail, i’ve loved train travel ever since. ^^ I’d be willing to invest in a good system over here again, if they’d actually DO it. (but i’m not holding my breath.)

You rang??

Howdy! Din’t mean no harm. Nice mornin’, this.

Would you like a bowl of blueberries? They’re quite special this year. ;->

*hands thru overflowing quart measure full of huge ripe berries with the dew still fresh on ‘em.*

no overnight parking at this train station. I’d have to get a ride and a pick up, but it’s doable. Actually I think I have a parishioner that lives near the station. I might be able to park there.

Anyway, it would be fun to go as a group.

1,711 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen selise:

Don’t you EVER apologize for offering an opinion in this forum…and I am disappointed and fearful of the trend here at FDL of the folks with the gavel lettin’ it drop on citizens who have the temerity to offer ideas or analyses that might tarnish their front page efforts.

No Citizen selise, your voice is no less important than ANY other here and I am glad that you commented on Greenwald’s experience…I was concerned about that too!

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION…NOBODY SHUTS UP AN FDLER!!

Hey Norske. Might as well repeat upstairs. Christy’s got fresh to*ture to go. Hot off the grill.

Even if you don’t get an opportunity to go with a group, it’s still a lot of fun. Far more relaxed than by car or plane, much more opportunity to sit and talk with other travelers. You can sit quietly and read or work on the computer or you can talk to your traveling neighbors or just watch the country flow by.

The best trip I ever took was when I was in the Air Force. I had to be in San Francisco by a Wednesday AM to catch a flight to Hawaii. Wound up taking Amtrak from Louisville to Chicago overnight Saturday then Chicago to SF, leaving Sunday evening and arriving lat Tuesday afternoon. I had a single sleeper cabin with a sink and toilet. Just a great great trip all the way around.

Can we keep it from being stolen, AGAIN?

not without being vigilent, i’m thinking.

trust but verify.

I take great joy at the implosion of the right. But then I see nearly unoppposed governance by the Democratic Party of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel, Steny Hoyer, Harold Ford, and the post-primaries Barak Obama. Sigh.

More and BETTER Democrats!!!

See you on the streets of Denver, Citizen wigwam!

I really like Ian’s characterization of how it was stolen in the first place:

What happens if there’s a class war and only one side bothers to show up and fight it? That’s what happened over the last thirty years. There was a class war, and the rich won. Period. It’s over, they kicked our knees out from under us, put on their steel toed boots and spent the last thirty years telling us that they were going to trickle on us and we’re going to like it and beg for more.

Ronald Reagan’s side showed up with steel-toed boots, and I don’t see Barak Obama and Nancy Pelosi turning the situation around.

thanks norske. i think you know i will “speak” my mind. but this time i didn’t know christy was trying to give folks a laugh… i had the opposite reaction because it reminded me of some of the reasons i was fustrated with nrn (and yearlykos last year). i would have liked to have seen some more “off message” speakers from our side. :(

I have a question, since (according to McLame) it’s apparently critical to have seen the situation “on the ground” before one espouses policies relating to military strategy…when was the first time that McLame (or Bush) actually set foot in Afghanistan or Iraq?

I bet it was well after they actually formulated their military policy positions.