Monday Funnies For A Cold, Snowy Night

Opening Shot In The Campaign Against Santorum

The race against Lil Ricky "Man on Dog Action" Santorum is on with a vengeance with Chuck Pennacchio's "rather large blog ad buy" yesterday which claims to provide "more than 3 million impressions a day."

If you went to "Daily Kos, The Raw Story, AmericaBlog, Atrios (and other blogs) yesterday, you couldn't help but notice the following ad:

Notice the ad uses the red "X" found in USA Next's anti AARP web ad which was widely spoofed all over the Internet.

The ad links to Chuck Pennacchio's website where you'll find a contest to create a social security BlogAd that will run in place of the above ad on the same sites mentioned above. Pennacchio provides the video clips to create the ad including the clueless young Repugs chanting:

“Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Social Security has got to go.”

The website also features its own blog as well as a special section for bloggers to link up their blog to Pennacchio's campaign.

Either Pennacchio's campaign is the most web savvy campaign since Howard Dean's run for president, or the bloggers have truly arrived. (or maybe it's a little of both).

What say any of you bloggers and blog readers about this development?

By the way, Pittsburgh's own Fester's Place received a nice link in the Daily KOS diary announcing the BlogAd contest.

Are you an FOB?

FOB (Friends of Bill) was a nickname for close insider supporters of Bill Clinton. If you're a FOBP (Friend of Bill Peduto) or a POP (People for Peduto) you should vote in today's KQV listener poll (The question is: if the mayoral primary election was today, who would you vote for?).

Call or click today to vote:
Call 412-333-9190
Click here for the KQV online poll

And just in case you hadn't heard, Bill Peduto officially anounced this morning on the roof of the Terminal Properties where the old Pittsburgh meets the new Pittsburgh that he's a mayoral candidate.

You can go HERE to sign up for the people for Peduto meetup. You can go to www.billpeduto.com for more information on Bill Peduto.

You like me, you really, really like me!

Well, it's no Koufax Award, but I'll take whatever I can get:


We Have A Winner In our first Caption Contest!!

Lil Ricky "Man on Dog Action" Santorum's & Young Repugs' Stupid Human Tricks

Daily Kos has a report on Lil Ricky "Man on Dog Action" Santorum's Social Security event in Philly that took place this week. It includes this bit:

[B]efore the event, Philly DFA began chanting "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Rick Santorum has got to go!" Local college Republicans, who are just about the only Republicans in West Philly, responded with a chant that beautifully was captured live by CNN: "hey-hey, ho-ho, Social Security has got to go!" I love it when the other side does your campaigning for you!

Inside the hall, the biggest applause line of the event was generated early on when Santorum asked a rhetorical question about demographics and funding: "what happens in 2008?" Before he could answer his own question, someone shouted "Bush leaves office," and the room went wild.

And, you can go HERE to actually see and hear the callow Young Repugs screwing up their talking points by actually telling the truth about the GOP's agenda for Social Security ("Hey-hey, ho-ho, Social Security has got to go!")

The Dems should make a commercial out of that clip ASAP!

Something random and fun

From Scooter Blue

"Try this and pass it on:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you."

So I tried it and here's what I got:

From Howard Dean's "You Have The Power" (Yes, this was the closest book to where I was sitting):

"We can build a society where we acknowledge our common bonds and where respect means we don't expect people to live in the streets and eat out of Dumpsters, a society where we can expect that people will be considered for who and not what they are."

Try it yourself and comment back at Scooter Blue

On the Down Low

There has been loads of snarky speculation that the naked gay conservative male prostitute sitting in the middle of the family values white house (Jeff Gannon/James D. Guckert) must have got his scoops from a "mentor" in the White House and that that "mentor" was Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove:



However, this seems not to be based on any actual evidence.

Once again, we at 2 Political Junkies have managed to secure actual photographic evidence that even AmericaBlog, KOS and atrios@blogspot.com, with all their resources, couldn't come up with.

We believe that the following photograph leaves little doubt as to who the likely mentor of Jeff Gannon, Male Prostitute, is:



Now that's a MANDATE!

AmericaBlog Contest

Daily KOS has a story on how the Swifties and USA Next are attacking the AARP and the ad that's running at the American Spectator site:



Of course there is now a contest to create an ad for the real Bush Agenda. It's being held at AmericaBlog. Here's my entry:

R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson

Some great quotes by Thompson @ Daily KOS:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/21/125743/138

The Post-Gazette on Negroponte

The usually reliable Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board must've recently inhaled some of the air being pumped into the Tribune-Review building. How else can one explain this editorial? It's from today's Post-Gazette.

From the second paragraph:

However, the nominee, John D. Negroponte, currently U.S. ambassador to Iraq, previously U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, having served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras, appears to be first rate. If confirmed by the Senate, he is likely to perform the functions of the newly created post with distinction.

Note the qualifier "appears to be" just before the pharase "first rate." That's the only negative in the paragraph. Indeed its about the most critical thing in the whole editorial.

Here are the last two paragraphs:

Mr. Negroponte's only possible shortcoming in the new position will be an absence of experience working directly in the intelligence field. On the other hand, he is a veteran consumer of intelligence, with recent very relevant need of it in his positions both at the United Nations and in Iraq. As a career Foreign Service Officer with some 40 years of experience, who has served all over the world, there isn't a whole lot that he hasn't seen. He isn't partisan politically, having started his career during the Eisenhower administration and having served in every administration since.

This looks like an excellent appointment. The kind of disinterested, cold-eyed intelligence counsel Mr. Negroponte will give President Bush, if he is confirmed, should be just what the doctor ordered for this president, for this country.

Again, the qualifier (it could be named the "escape hatch phrase") "looks like" before the phrase "excellent appointment."

Does the editorial board of the Post-Gazette really think that Negroponte's only possible short coming is his absense of direct intelligence work? Did they miss the fact that he was Reagan's man in Honduras during the Iran-Contra scandal? That he was Dubya's man at the UN during the run-up to the war? Here's what another newspaper's editorial board (The Baltimore Sun) had to say recently about Negroponte:

For four years in the 1980s, he was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, at the time perhaps the quintessential banana republic. His job was to help oversee the Reagan administration's covert and outside-the-law support for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, who were financed by the illegal sale of arms to the mullahs in Iran. In Honduras itself, a death squad trained by the CIA went about its dirty business. Mr. Negroponte has long denied that he knew about and covered up the death squad's atrocities, which came to light in a series of articles in The Sun in 1995. Maybe that's true - but it happened on his watch, at a time when he was the most powerful man in Honduras. If it is true, it doesn't say much for his ability to marshal good intelligence.

Or David Corn of The Nation:

These days Negroponte's tenure in Honduras is old news. The Washington Post's front-page story on his nomination did not mention his stint there. Senate staffers say that his record in Honduras won't be a focus of the confirmation hearings. But his tour of duty there is worth scrutiny, for it raises questions about his credibility and his ability to handle tough situations and inconvenient truths. While he was in Honduras and for years afterward, Negroponte refused to acknowledge the human rights abuses. In a 1982 letter to The Economist he said it was "simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras." The next year he maintained, "There is no indication that the infrequent human rights violations that do occur are part of deliberate government policy." And during his 2001 confirmation he stated, "I do not believe then, nor do I believe now, that these abuses were part of a deliberate government policy. To this day, I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras." How then does he account for a 1997 CIA Inspector General investigation that concluded, "The Honduran military committed hundreds of human rights abuses since 1980, many of which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned" and linked to "death squad activities"?

And let's not forget that during the run up to the war in Iraq, it was John Negroponte whose job it was to protect and defend Bush's incomplete and misleading rationale on Saddam's WMD. True it wasn't his job to confirm any of Bush's "intelligence" but The P-G should have at least mentioned Negroponte's place in Bush's war.

Here's how The Sun ends its editorial:

American intelligence is in need of repair; on that point, all sides agree. The nation must have an incisive intelligence chief, not afraid to deliver bad news when he has to, and able to stand up to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. But on top of that, America needs a director who by virtue of his reputation and his experience would make it clear from the start that there is no place for abuse, and no place for truth-shading, in the agencies he oversees. Instead, the Senate has been asked to confirm Mr. Negroponte.

Good point., doncha think??

So what happened at the P-G? Did Dickiecougarmellonscaife send over some tainted kung pao? Were the archives at the P-G suddenly off-line? Did Jack Kelly write the editorial when no one was watching?

There has to be a good explanation for the editorial board's sudden amnesia.

Has to be.

What Did The Hooker Know And When Did He Know It?

(And who the f*ck told him?!?)

Looks like Gannon knew that the "shock and awe" campaign launching the Iraq war was about to happen four hours before President Bush announced it to the nation and he told his scoop to a news producer for a major network.

According to Americablog:

According to my source, Gannon's insider tidbits were always on the mark. "Gannon's stuff was always golden," the producer says. My source says they kept asking themself, "how does this small news outfit get this info?"

Yes, Karl, et al:
How does a hooker get all this insider information from the Bush Dynasty?

Daily KOS discussion of this topic at:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/18/103912/606

We're Going to Reap What We Sow

The Bush Dynasty's nomination of John D. Negroponte to serve as our country's first director of national intelligence should come as no surprise as it fits a pattern of Bush advancing someone from a handful of people he trusts who also just happen to have awful records on human rights.

What's missing from the coverage of Negroponte in the MSM is any mention of his "dark past" as David Corn puts it in The Nation.

According to Corn's Capital Games article:

"After all, during the Reagan years, when he was ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte was involved in what was arguably an illegal covert quid pro quo connected to the Iran/contra scandal, and he refused to acknowledge significant human rights abuses committed by the pro-US military in Honduras."

[snip]

His previous exploits, though, warrant more attention than ever. He has been credibly accused of rigging a human rights report that was politically inconvenient. This is a bad omen. The fundamental mission of the intelligence community is to provide policymakers with unvarnished and valuable information-even if it causes the policymakers headaches. But there's reason to believe that Negroponte did the opposite in tough circumstances. If that is the case, he would not be the right man to oversee an intelligence community that needs solid leaders who are committed to truth-finding."

So now we have Negroponte who whitewashed human rights abuses in the Honduras set to oversee our intelligence agencies; Alberto R. Gonzales who was the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Dynasty as the Attorney General of this country; and Donald H. Rumsfeld who tried to deny any complicity in the policy of torture at Abu Gharib and who has set up a new paramilitary intelligence operation (Death Squads) inside the Department of Defense still ruling as Secretary of Defense.

This is the Bush Dynasty's true legacy.

I weep for our country, as should we all.

Daily Show "Attack Bloggers" Transcript

The Honsberger is a Liar blog has a transcript up now on the hysterically funny Daily Show bit on Gannon, bloggers and the MSM:

Daily Show Transcript

How Much Will Privatization Cost You?Here's a Calculator That will Give You the Answer

Click the link below to find out:

Bush Social Security Plan

Daily Show Gannon / Bloggers Piece from 2/16/05 Show...

...can be viewed here (QuickTime):

One Good Move


The line that I was trying to remember from the commentary by Ted Hitler (Steven Colbert's real name revealed!):

"Where I draw the line is with these Attack Bloggers: just someone with a computer who gathers, collates and publishes accurate information that is then read by the general public. They have no credibility. All they have is facts. Spare me!"

The Daily Show Nails It

Hilarious Daily Show take on the Gannon story tonight. I would have written down some of the lines but I was laughing too hard. I can say that they scalped the MSM's line that bloggers were only interested in "collecting scalps" by saying something along the lines of "How dare those bloggers come along with their research and facts." The segment mentioned AmericaBlog, Daily KOS and Atrios and showed the Wonkette site.

Will post a transcript or video link when one is available.

This Is What 4,500 Valentine's Day Roses Look Like

This what a great big Valentine's Day THANK YOU to Sen. Barbara Boxer looks like:



The Barbara Boxer Rose Campaign sent 4,500 roses to Sen. Boxer to thank her for having the courage to stand up to the Repugs on Ohio, Rice, Gonzales, etc. (see here).

Classy lady that she is, Boxer donated her roses to our wounded soldiers recovering at Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

She also wrote a "Thank You" blog on Daily KOS.

Some media coverage of the story here, here, and here.

Jeff's Been A Bad, Bad Boy

AMERICAblog has all the X-rated pics and links that Jeff Gannon didn't want anyone to see (too bad they didn't use that naked photo of Jeff urinating for his official White House Press Pass).

So is Jeff the actual whore (and not just your run-of-the-mill media whore) who committed the crime of exposing Valerie Plame? Maybe someone should volunteer to pay him his old weekend escort rate of $1,200 and find out during the "pillow talk."

Full story at:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

Does this mean that the FEC will regulate bloggers?

According to Drudge (hey, we heard it on C-Span this morning too), the FEC May Tighten Restrictions On Internet Political Activity. Here's what Drudge says:

FEC May Tighten Restrictions On Internet Political Activity
Mon Feb 14 2005 10:38:41 ET

The Federal Election Commission next month will begin looking at tightening restrictions on political activities on the Internet, ROLL CALL reports Monday.

The FEC is planning to examine the question of how Internet activities, when coordinated with candidates' campaigns, fit into the definition of 'public communications.

Specifically, the FEC is planning to examine the question of how Internet activities, when coordinated with candidates' campaigns, fit into the definition of "public communications." While coordinated communications are considered campaign contributions and therefore subject to strict contribution limits, current FEC regulations adopted in 2002 carve out an exemption for coordinated political communications that are transmitted over the Internet.

Developing...

And, here's a little something that I found on this topic from OMB Watch

FEC Schedules New Rulemaking in 2005 » OMB Watch » Home » Nonprofit Issues » Elections and Issue Advocacy
Published 11/30/2004 11:32 PM

Beginning in January 2005 the Federal Election Commission (FEC) will begin an intense seven-month series of proceedings to amend rules implementing the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) rejected by a federal court this fall, and take up new issues generated by this year's election. Among those with greatest impact on nonprofits will be expansion of regulation into Internet communications, reconsideration of the electioneering communications exemption for 501(c)(3) groups and party donations to nonprofits.

At its Nov. 18 meeting the FEC approved a schedule for the new rules along with a requirement for quick final action once public comment periods have closed. Nonprofits will be most impacted by consideration of:

- Party donations to tax-exempt organizations. The FEC staff have drafted a proposed rule for the Commissioners to consider at their Dec. 2 meeting. If the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is approved, it will be published in the Federal Register for public comment likely in January.
- Internet exclusion from rules on coordination between campaigns and outside groups and the definition of a public communication. That proceeding will begin in March 2005.
- Electioneering communications. The FEC will consider exemptions for 501(c)(3) groups and documentary ads, as well as unpaid broadcasts. The federal district court overturned the unpaid broadcast exemption, but the FEC has appealed. This proceeding will begin in June 2005.

At the FEC meeting Vice-Chair Ellen Weintraub said substantive changes in the exemption for Internet communications are likely. Some of the other issues, such as the 501(c)(3) exemption for electioneering communications, were overturned on technical grounds and may not be radically changed.

For information on the court decision being appealed see the Oct. 4 OMB Watcher. More background is also available on the FEC webpage on rulemaking proceedings.

Let Them Know!

Let them know that you appreciate the DNC's choice of Howard Dean as their new Chairman by donating here:

Contribution amount:
$

Might not be a bad idea to use the "code" of adding a penny to your contribution (as in giving $20.01 instead of $20.00). The "add a penny" used to signify that you supported the Internet/blogs, later, during the Kerry campaign it came to mean that you were "on loan to Kerry from Dean."