Jane!

Is Rahm still wearing his Tinker campaign button?

Does HuffPost consider FDL such a threat that it’s not inviting you to their lunch?

What’s next on their “menu” of presenters: Harold Ford, Jr.?

dish it Jane dish it ! yum -my !

aren’t allowed to be up close and personal in the private rooms within the private rooms,

what’s a lapdance goin’ for ?

ps – your “Nubians” reference – is Dr Benway in Denver ? and who is his sponsor ?*g*

I dont remember the speaker of the house of my state legislature coming over to seek me out in the press room, but Marcy is special :)

George S. wouldn’t know “new media” if it bit him on the hindquarter.
Hi, Jane. How can you keep food down in the same room as Rahm?

But our uniqueness depends on never becoming too close to the powers that be such that we aren’t afraid to criticize them and take them on, so I actually think they’re doing a great favor.

So on that note — Rahm’s going on now about How To Win Elections, like he knows. Lots of polite clapping at the pearls of wisdom he’s dispensing; apparently few in the room remember the Battle of Tammy Duckworth.

Isn’t that how it starts?

Being “respectful” to people like Rahm, who don’t deserve it and don’t return it and will use it against you the moment they think it’s in their best interest is an early step on the road to co-option.

If none of the bloggers present call him on his past actions, it becomes a tacit approval of them, smaller perhaps than Nancy’s “off the table” but fundamentally no different in character or consequences.

– MarkusQ

How was the salmon? How do bloggers get to do more than blog?

hey jane, GREAT 2 c u!

I just posted this downstairs and it is HUGE

I just got this from think progress and this REALLY has to gain legs, talk about treason, here it is right in our face from the vice president himself

The LA Times reports that Joseph R. Wood, Vice President Cheney’s deputy assistant for national security affairs, “was in Georgia shortly before the war began.” James Gerstenzang wonders what Wood was doing there. Sergei Markov — a senior political scientist who is close to Vladimir Putin — claimed recently that the war was “part of a plot by Dick Cheney” TO HELP JOHN MCCAIN. But media reports indicate that a “parade” of U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had warned Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili not to instigate the conflict with Russia.

bold and caps are mine…THAT is treason plain and simple and in your face

this has to get legs

twain points out that cheney is going to georgia next week and ls reminds us cindey mccain is going there

cindy mccain?

what exactyly is cindy going to be doing there?

Thinking about those corporate boxes. I got to sit in one of those for a hockey game once, thanks to an investment firm that wanted to handle my retirement money. Very nice. Decent food, great view of the game. Nice to see how the other half lives all the time.

America is a big country. It’s run by money. Always has, as Norske never fails to point out. But it’s worse now than it was in my youth. We really are outsiders. The Obama’s are outsiders. The Clinton’s used to be considered White Trash outsiders, but they somehow got in after Billie boy made his first $20 million on the corporate lecture circuit.

No country for old men, or poor people either.

Meanwhile Fox News is doing the pool feed so we keep getting a really Foxified look at the convention on most of the teevee stations. The propangda is really interesting to watch – not much video of any excitement, mostly bored, frumpy people. Thank God for bloggers! It’s the only way to get real news within the US, kinda like all the underground newspapers were in the 1960’s.

Saakashvili got impatient and screwed the timing. The invasion was to be late September or October. May the Russians saw it coming and conned him into making the the first move ahead of schedule. I wouldn’t put it past them.

think progress posted that clip but this is the la times referance, it is facinating, here is a snippet;

« Coming up at the White House and beyond… | Main

Why was Cheney’s guy in Georgia before the war?
What was a top national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney doing in Georgia shortly before Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s troops engaged in what became a disastrous fight with South Ossetian rebels — and then Russian troops?

Not, according to the vice president’s office, what you might think — if your thinking takes you into the realm of Cheney giving his blessing to the Georgian’s military operation.

To be sure, Cheney has been a leader of the hardliners in the administration when it comes to standing up to Russia — to the point that the man who ran the Pentagon as the Cold War came to an end during the administration of the first President Bush has been seen as ready to renew that face-off with Moscow.

It was Cheney who visited the Georgian embassy in Washington last week to sign a remembrance book as a demonstration of the administration’s support.

Meanwhile, the bloggers have been coralled into the Big Tent, and politicians and media figures are paraded through to look at us like they’re wandering through the zoo.

That is very funny stuff.

Do you have a linky?
I suddenly desperately need to write a letter to the editor of my local paper!

Is Rahm still wearing his Tinker campaign button?

there’s evers a chance

Hi Jane, Have you seen any of the candidates endorsed by blue america and if so what kind of response have you gotten.

linky on 13

*waving*

“Tinkerbelle” would be more appropriate.

No Dr. Benway but I might have glimpsed a Mugwump or two while watching C-Span.

I imagine the snarky blogging tent is kinda like this:
Elephant Gun
nice trunks.

Cindy Lou going to Georgia? Why? Is it too early to model this season’s shiny boots..or is that Condi’s job?

:D

We could call it “Welcome to the Monkey House” but then we’d have to argue about which group is filled with monkeys.

My vote is that it’s the Politicians.

“Gloriously lacking respectability”
Words to live by.

All these characters who claim to know how elections are won are losers.

just so long as it’s not a petting zoo.

Rahm’s going on now about How To Win Elections, like he knows.

My Pet Gloat

Hi Jane- I see that you have a group of reporters who are actually interviewing, observing, and reporting the news- the missing ingredient in most blogs—great work. When blogs start breaking stories and scooping the traditional press- there will be a LOT of notice taken

Pretty good production values for a bunch of DF(blogging)H.

DFH’s still huh?! and i say bravo to that…. bloggers will hold dems feet to the fire

People are worried about bloggers being “co-opted.”

Why the big media certainly is in the GOP pocket and Rahm lets use immigration as an issue could have cost Dems Hispanic votes in more than a few states if he had gotten his way, Co-opted or just STUPID?

Oops! I think Bill Clinton may have just stepped in it again. He was publicly mulling over what voters would do if they had two candidates; one was in tune with the voter in almost all the issues, but the voter doesn’t think he can really deliver. The other candidate is only in tune with the voter on about half of the issues, but the voter believes that he can deliver. He poses the question about what the voter should do. Of course, he’s talking about a hypothetical situation occurring far, far away and many years hence, and none of this has anything to do with what’s going on now, but…

Guess that guy will never, never learn!

When blogs start breaking stories and scooping the traditional press- there will be a LOT of notice taken

They have. And there hasn’t. (see TPM)

Rahm can win elections like McCain can win wars. Say anything to get elected and then just declare victory or blame your enemies for your failure.
I’m guessing Tricky Dick was both their role models.

Actually, you don’t even have to look at TPM. Look at FDL.

linky?

*sigh*
maybe Borowitz isn’t kidding
Bill Clinton’s Convention Speech to Be on Five-Second Delay

Cindy’s going over to teach them how to make Passion Fruit Mousse…/snark

Meanwhile, the bloggers have been coralled into the Big Tent, and politicians and media figures are paraded through to look at us like they’re wandering through the zoo. I actually like that it’s slummy and hot and ghettoized: we don’t get much access and the people parading through are always looking over their shoulder like they hope to see someone covering them with an elephant gun.

It’s good that we’re not yet considered “safe.”

…and I think that is grand. Politicians should not feel comfortable around true journalists. If they were doing their job, all of the abuses of the last seven years would have been stopped at year two.

Man, the moment they call me respectable-

I quit!

Seconded.

Thanks Jane.

Is there anything more pretentiously pathetic than Sit! Wolfie and Glenn Beck discussing the legal resumes of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama?

Reminds me of my cocker spaniel licking the balls he no longer had after he got neutered.

I’m pretty sure I will never, ever have to worry about that.

Bustedfuckingnuckles

clearly, the blogs will never garner respectability with headlines like this:

Todd Takes A Dump

by Steve Soto

:~)

digg

Hey Jane!

Did you hear that the Fox skybox got flooded by the sprinklers?

Walking down the hall of sponsors yesterday at the Pepsi Center, and seeing politicians all puffed up as they walk in and out of the boxes of their big corporate donors, gives us a glimpse of the zeitgeist that drives our political system. We aren’t allowed to be up close and personal in the private rooms within the private rooms, but it’s quickly apparent that progressive organizers are little more than annoying ankle biters trying to get between them and their Comcast.

I just got my copy of John Harwood and Gerald Seib’s book, “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power.” They’re coming by for an FDL Book Salon on September 7, and I’ll be curious to get their take on the zeitgeist Jane’s describing here.

Jane, you have to let fly with the tersest, most accurate assessments around. Keep it up! And remember this quote? (Of course you do.)

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi.

they report, we deluge

Jane just so you know, the Big Tent is located right next to one of the coolest bookstores in the US; The Tattered Cover. And the lady that owns it, Joyce Meskis is a big time freedom of speech person. She defied a Patriot Act demand to turn over reading lists.

Judge Denies Stay; Miers Must Appear to Answer HJC’s Subpoena

From TPM

We can have a democracy of, by, and for the people, or pseudo-democracy brought to us and managed by AT&T.

The telecoms bought Obama’s FISA vote but we must continue to insist that he live up to the ideals that Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama talked about last night. We must continue to insist that he pay more than lip service to the ideals that are being so ably evoked this week in Denver.

Power to the people!

amen strat !

sssh Jane, You’re Scaring the Straights !

naptime. bbl.

CSpan, firedogs, CSpan

What irony! What a parady! Just the other day I read an article declaring that if Obama is elected, Michelle Obama should act more like Laura Bush than like Hillary Clinton. Now McSame sends his wife Cindy, the liquor tycoon, to speak to the President of a nation that just experienced a situation that was very much like war and very nearly mushroomed out of control. Michelle Obama is an accredited attorney. Does Cindy even have a degree? McShame barely does and might not if his daddy wasn’t an Admiral. Imagine how hard you would have to work to graduate 5th from the bottom of your class, 894th out of 899. The unmitigated gall of this jerk!

Tom Browkaw asking if McCain can keep using the POW card.

And to think I thought at first McCain was being self-effacing, in a yeah, maybe I’ve said it too much mode on Leno…and then I realized, no. He’s going to keep up his POW version of Chinese water torture on us.

Like Webb? He just reminded Brokaw that Vietnam Vets blame the democratic party for losing that war.

Actually, that isn’t too big a stretch. Being spineless renders Glenn and Wolfie remarkably flexible.

I LOVE the “Get Out of Gaff Free” card. It’s lots better than the purple heart band-aid.

Hope someone is printing them up and distributing them.

But this is good for republicans. Putin wants a democrat in office so he’s trying to throw cheney under the bus because cheney was picking a fight with the bear to help mccain.
See?

So is McBush acting like he’s already prez- sending his wife to do diplomacy? Didn’t he kick the shit out of Obama for that? Confusing ain’t it?

oops. forgot link.

still catching up…is cindy going to be dodging sniper fire? :P

I would like someone to point out straight to mccain’s face that according to cheney and bush, mccain was NEVER torutured, none of the techniques used on him are torture at all, they are “enhanced interogation”

I want to see his reaction when someone tells him that to his face

He sent her over to write the check. They don’t have a joint account, remember? She has to sign it.

How much longer can Browkow use his “How much longer can McCain use his POW card” card?

Oh, why the check? Are they buying a house there?

In August 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain.[41] He was subjected to rope bindings and repeated beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[30][41] Further injuries led to the beginning of a suicide attempt, which was stopped by guards.[30] After four days, McCain made an anti-American propaganda “confession”.[30] He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he would later write, “I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”[42][43] His injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.[44] He subsequently received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.[45] Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract “confessions” and propaganda statements.[46]

McC will probably say they tried to nuke her. He just loves war.

green screen . . . . Wag the Dog . . . . ‘nuf said.

I did see Steve Cohen. He thanked everyone for helping him out during his primary, especially Howie.

sounds like a job for Mike Stark.

Late here, but, please Jane, tell Arianna for me that she’s a perfectly nice looking lady and that she doesn’t really need to find the worst picture of Hillary Clinton for her site every time she runs a Clinton story.
Puleeeze.

mccain threw cheney AND rumsfeld under the bus the other day, I don’t have the link but he flat out called rumsfeld teh worst sec of def america has ever had and he said that bush was served very badly by cheney and this is all cheney’s fault

I wonder if cheney would do that much for mccain if he knew mccain was about to call him and his bestest pal morons

Cindy McCain went to USC BA education MA special ed

good one. I thought that bribery was the one sure thing that works over there. Cindy has to pay them off for their public display of “affection.”

Just a thought.

LOVE Steve Cohen. He’s turned out to be one of the best.

If you see Sestak, say hi for me. See how he reacts.

Actually …

http://emptywheel.firedoglake……lten-suit/

Denied! Bates Refuses to Stay Order in Miers/Bolten Suit
By: emptywheel Tuesday August 26, 2008 1:08 pm

From the TPM link

Judge Denies Stay; Miers Must Appear to Answer HJC’s Subpoena
By Kate Klonick – August 26, 2008, 2:22PM

They’re both pretty good

Well, if it’s true, no one can say his assholiness didn’t bring it on himself!

What does one wear while dodging sniper fire? Perhaps Paris Hilton can tell us what’s hot and what’s not.

You know, that’s what’s missing from all this reporting. Never mind polls, lobbyists, speeches. Some fashion news. What are people wearing? Where’s Joan Rivers?

Kagro too.

Cheney doesn’t give a shit about mccain. He just wants a compliant administration or two to run out the statute of limitations so he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his rotten life in Paraguay with the rest of the war criminals.

It would be nice to have Steve and all the other Dems that Rahm has screwed over gather together in time to attend his speech.

not in the only undisputed version of his episode

the following is from here

In all the discussion of John McCain’s recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of “long-time standing” that victims of Bush’s torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely “enhanced interrogation.”

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the “intelligence” we have procured from “interrogating” terror suspects. Feel safer?

The cross-in-the-dirt story – although deeply fishy to any fair observer – is in the realm of the unprovable. But the actual techniques used on McCain, and the lies they were designed to legitimize, are a matter of historical record. And the government of the United States now practices the very same techniques that the Communist government of North Vietnam once proudly used against American soldiers. When they are used against future John McCains, the victims will know, in a way McCain didn’t, that their own government has no moral standing to complain.

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

These are the prices people pay for power.

It was on CNN; they ran the video. Probably will be on again at some point; they always run stuff repeatedly.

but cheney is a narcisist and insecure, I cannot believe he will stand still for mccain calling him and his pal morons

don’t forget, cheney actually had the gall to say rumsfeld was the best sec of def ever

Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

psychopaths only care about their own pain.

even though I’ve never been there I can attest to this, I have a Denver cousin and always get the neatest books from her from there.

Cindy’s going over to teach them how to make Passion Fruit Mousse…/snark

Where’d she steal the recipe from? /s

Cheney doesn’t care – it’s all part of the plan to get McCain elected so Cheney can still run the country (deeper into the ground)

The drill down gang has gotten bigger:

WASHINGTON—Six more senators on Tuesday joined a bipartisan group of 10 senators backing a bill they say will break the stalemate over offshore drilling in Congress.

Three Democrats and three Republicans joined the so-called Gang of 10, making it the Gang of 16. The group supports a bill that would lift a ban on oil and natural gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the southeastern U.S. coast, invest $20 billion in the development of petroleum-free motor vehicles and extend tax credits for renewable energy.

Among the new converts are two Republican senators facing tough re-election bids this fall, underscoring the role high energy prices are playing on the campaign trail. By signing on with the group, Sens. Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John Sununu of New Hampshire have broken with the majority of their party, which like President Bush, would like to see the moratorium on drilling lifted along the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Sununu said Tuesday that while he favors lifting the moratorium entirely, the bipartisan bill opens up new areas and has a chance of being passed this year.

The other senators rounding out the Gang of 16 on Tuesday were Republican John Warner of Virginia and Democrats Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Tom Carper of Delaware and Ken Salazar of Colorado.

(my bold)

What, he thinks Hillary is only in tune with voters half the time? Or is she the one that can’t deliver? /s

EXCELLANT!

I spit my soda when I read that

no other way to watch the proceedings

I have wondered if anybody has informed Cheney that he has to leave his shadow government at the same time Bush exits the White House. Hopefully, it won’t require a bunker-buster.

The fabulous Christy is upstairs.

I just hope those poor wounded Georgian soldiers keep a tight grip on their oxycontin

Are you guys hearing the protesters behind Matthews and crew? They are really shouting. You can almost not hear the talking heads, and they’re acting like it’s not happening. Anyone?

Haven’t posted the invite in this time slot:

BBQ chez RevDeb Sat. Aug. 30. Philly area in the burbs. Come celebrate McThuselah’s B’day a day late and a dollar short. Those sans cars who want to take trains to Wilmington or the burbs can be fetched from stations. Millinaryman, Elliot, Scarecrow and others are coming. BYOB.

Only a couple of hours from the DeeCee area too. Just let me know and I’ll send details—my screen name at mac dot com. We eat well around here so come on over.

I lived there for almost a year and used to enjoy starting at one end of the 16th Street Mall and strolling to the other, stopping at stores like Tattered Cover along the way.

16th St Mall is an open air street mall that runs for approximately a mile. Free buses and emergency traffic are the only vehicles allowed.

Some nice restaurants and micro brew pubs along the way as well.

Agreed, and above all he is a self-preservationist. He’ll exact his toll on mccain in due time, but right now he’s all about keeping: democrats out of office; the office from appointing special investigators; special investigators out of his ass; and his ass out of the brig.

Yay! I couldn’t be more tickled!

eXcellent

they report, we deluge

I like that. Or – they report, we correct, in torrents

Meanwhile, we have a primary on the 88th Birthday of the certifying of the Nineteenth Amendment.

So on that note — Rahm’s going on now about How To Win Elections, like he knows.

I guess he’s not honest enough to say “loudly claim credit even if you were fighting the real winners every step of the way”?

Jane being interviewed on camera as we speak.

It’s only Chinese water torture to us if we let it be. Sooner or later, someone’s got to ask how many times he’s going to go back to that well before it becomes poisoned.

I guess I don’t understand your point. Are you telling us that Bush/Cheney are not truthful? Wow

If memory serves, Rove went there earlier in the summer when he was showing contempt of Congress as well….

Seems like a replay of the “Let’s have Israel start a war” from the summer of 2006–didn’t work then….

That could be the powderkeg I’ve been looking for! Do you think it’d make him mad enough to blow publicly?

Are we talking Bob Schrum here? ;lol;

Thanks to all posting “from inside” – it is a great & different perspective to all this that I’ve never seen/heard before.

I’m saying mccain is going to have to say bush and cheney are war criminals unless he wants to say he was never tortured

that is a catch 22 and he needs to make his choice, either one he makes loses for him

If memory serves, Rove went there earlier in the summer when he was showing contempt of Congress as well….

WOW!

I’m glad to hear that. Now if she had taken any poli-sci courses, or courses on international relations like Obama did, even maybe a JD or something more pertinent. What she has is respectable for a First Lady along the lines of Laura Bush; it does not seem to me to be pertinent to a surrogate for a Senator or a Sec’y of State! You don’t even see Bush sending Laura on this sort of trip.

Matthews took great delight yesterday in calling PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) crackpots!

Just wandering by. Charlie Rose has a panel of wheezing old (not talking age here) Establishment warhorses opining about the convention. I get the feeling Rose would act like he knew what the blogosphere was (like he does with everything else) but wouldn’t really know it if it kicked him in the ass.

I think standing off with a camera and a long lens might be very productive. But then, I’m not there.

i’m sitting at the huffpo luncheon where people like rahm emanuel, charlie rose, kaherine weymouth, george stephanopolous, arianna

i didn’t know anybody liked those guys…

loved reading down this thread, and Jane’s viewpoint. thank you! such refreshment!