Fact-esque

The McCain Narrative, Brought to You By...The NYT

Not that I should probably pick on them more than anyone else. Even the usually reliable Boston Globe had a set-piece about how Saint John was going to be a "maverick" again and how "moving" his speech was.

McCain spoke movingly about his years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and how it changed him from a selfish and brash young man to a mature "servant" of his country. "I've never lived a day, in good times or in bad, that I don't thank God for that privilege," he said.

It's just that the ever-predictable Adam Nagourney outdid himself praising McC's manliness. He was "firm", he "pledged", he's "an iconoclast", a locution I don't mind him using because it's so esoteric very few people know what it means, even educated people. But it sounds positive (if it isn't, you know, dirty). You don't find out about the less attractive aspects of St John's evening until well down in the article, stuff like protesters and an unresponsive audience sitting on its hands.

it was often offered in a monotone as he stood before a solid-color backdrop that flicked from green to blue. The reaction was far more subdued than it was the night before for his running mate, Ms. Palin. There were stretches in which he drew only a smattering of applause.

***

One of the livelier moments of the evening came when Mr. McCain was interrupted by several antiwar protestors who had infiltrated the hall. Their signs were quickly ripped from their hands, and they were carried out of the arena as the crowd shouted, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

Mr. McCain, who by now has become accustomed to these kinds of interruptions, responded with a smile. “Please don’t be diverted by the ground noise and the static,” Mr. McCain said, before adding “Americans want us to stop yelling at each other.”

Then why did Sarah Palin spend half her speech last night yelling at Obama and liberals?

The Tax Monster Is a Very Picky Eater

Here is a crazy idea to address the United States’ gaping fiscal deficit: persuade corporate America to start paying taxes.

That's the first sentence in an NYT editorial today and one of the most disingenuous sentences I've ever had the displeasure of reading. "Disingenuous" because they have to know better. Last December one of their best business writers, 2-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, published a book called Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill), an in-depth look at the way the rich and powerful of corporate America deliberately used their money and influence to restructure the tax system so it favored, well, who else? - themselves.

In other words, who are you going to "persuade"? They've spent some 30 years setting it up this way and the only way they're going to give it up is by force. Or is the staid NYT editorial board actively suggesting we arrest them all? or make them pay taxes at gunpoint if that's what it takes? Because that's what it will take.

The tax restructuring the rich used the GOP to bring about cost them $$hundreds of millions of $$ in bribes (we call them "campaign contributions now, isn't that cute?) to Congressional leaders and even a couple of presidents. They had to buy the second party as well in order to ensure success. And they had to pay to sell the entire nation on the notion that a silver-spoon elitist who enjoyed signing death warrants (it was his "favorite job as Governor of Texas") and had failed every business he'd ever had was actually a daring populist, a Joe Six-Pack kind of guy who cared about other people and had been a huge business success.

That fantasy cost them a bundle.

Gag Me with a Spoon

My gag reflex is on high alert and I'm digging my hip boots out of the closet in preparation for wading through the latest round of hypocritical horseshit oozing from President Bush's bouche (pronounced, naturally, "bush" or "boosh") like the river of bile in Ghostbusters II. Like, for instance:

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people," President Bush said yesterday. "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

But of course you can invade and threaten a soveriegn state if the govt wasn't elected by its people - as long as there's oil to be ripped off.

But what got me today wasn't the expected hypocritical insensitivity of Bush, which we're all used to by now, but the hypocritical insensitivity of WaPo editorial writer Fred Hiatt (or Michael Gergen - they're as interchangable as Godzilla dolls) as he waded into the controversy bubbling over with patriotic fervor.

IN MOSCOW yesterday, President Dmitry Medvedev gave every indication that Russia was winding up its military operation in Georgia. Meanwhile, his forces continued to advance into that sovereign nation and bomb widely dispersed strategic targets there. The contradiction was consistent with the Russian regime's behavior throughout this crisis: Its words have borne no connection to its actions; its actions are untethered to international norms.

(emphasis added)

Fred has been a good deal less sensitive over the past 7 years to the incessant contradictions between the Bush Admin's words and actions. Apparently Fred only counts lies about wars when they're somebody else's lies.

I don't know. Even if we can somehow find a way to fix the disasters of war, economy, and fiscal fraud left behind by the worst president in history, what are we going to do about a press that is blind, deaf, and dumb by choice?

Imiigration Crackdown Skips Law

The recent Bush crackdown on illegal immigrants, a move to placate the loud-mouthed xenophobes and race baiters who fill what's left of the GOP base, has been handled with all the contempt for law and the rights of the accused that we would expect from a Bush DOJ. According to a Federal court translator, most of the people we threw in prison the last few weeks - people who would simply have been deported prior to Bush's craven political pandering - didn't understand either the procedures or the rights they had within them.

[Erik Camayd-Freixas] was summoned here by court officials to translate in the hearings for nearly 400 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a raid on May 12 at a meatpacking plant. Since then, Mr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, has taken the unusual step of breaking the code of confidentiality among legal interpreters about their work.

In a 14-page essay he circulated among two dozen other interpreters who worked here, Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.

In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

(emphasis added)

That figures. When Bush wants action, as we all know now, he isn't too interested in details like whether or not the action is legal. It's legal because he says it is, and the Democratic Congress just agreed so it's difficult to puzzle out what the problem is here. What do we need trials for anyway? The whole 400 are obviously guilty, and anyway they're Mexicans so who cares? Throw em in jail and good riddance.

Modern conservatives in both parties don't seem to think that the Constitution applies to people they don't like. In fact, they don't seem to think it applies to anyone but them, and they've been cheerfully gutting or violating any sections of it they find offensive or inconvenient whenever some panty-waist liberal insists that those sections be applied to everyone.

All that law shit takes too much time. Back in the Old West, they used to be able to hang people that somebody claimed were horse thieves without bothering with such picayune details as trials. We're back to those Glory Days, I guess, and the Pubs love it.

Will Obama reverse this? Maybbut otoh he''s a conservative, too. He'll probably just build another fence.

GOP Ops Charge Voter Fraud in Alabama - Again

Gawd, these people never give up.

With their party all but disintegrating because of the horrendous president they elected and the utter failure of their (insane) policies, radical Republican operatives are nevertheless attempting to sabotage yet another election with unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud in the states they still control. One of them is Alabama, where Rove's hacks had Democratic Gov Don Siegelman jailed on trumped up corruption charges just before the election (he was recently released), and they're at it again. This time they claim to have rumors of Democratic officials paying for votes and affidavits in which these supposed voters say they were encouraged to vote several times.

Federal and state authorities are looking into accusations of voting fraud in three largely black counties of Alabama, including Perry and Lowndes Counties, which played a historic role in the struggle for black voting rights in the 1960s.

In May, a local citizens group gathered affidavits detailing several cases in which at least one Democratic county official paid citizens for their votes, or encouraged them to vote multiple times. The affidavits were presented to state officials in Montgomery, the capital, and after the June 3 primary, the Alabama attorney general, Troy King, a Republican, seized voting records from the primary election in Bullock, Lowndes and Perry Counties.

And, of course, Bush's DOJ is "helping".

The United States Department of Justice posted a team of observers to monitor the primary, and the Alabama secretary of state, Beth Chapman, a Republican, reported hearing from one of the federal observers that a candidate had “free rein” of a polling place, where campaigning is prohibited, passing out sample ballots and instructing voters how to vote.

Chapman is also "raising questions" about absentee ballots (naturally) and generally making a big noise about the corrupt Democrats.

Anybody wanna bet that a) this whole thing goes away after the election, and b) we never see a scintilla of actual evidence that what these conscienceless dweebs say is true? The exact same charges have been filed in other states by other Republican ops and so far not a single proof has been offered by any of them and every time the "investigations" have vanished once the election was over.

But in the meantime ideological party hacks King and Chapman are going to use their power to cripple what looks to be a close election, trying to swing Alabama to McCain and the other GOP candidates in order to maintain control of their state whether the voters want them or not. That's the real vote fraud: the modern conservative's total contempt for the actual wishes of voters. To the modcons, voters are tools to be manipulated if possible, ignored if necessary, and elections are there to be fixed, stolen, or sabotaged so they come out the Right way. Mod cons have no sense of democracy, no belief in it, and the phrase "fair play" makes them giggle. To mod cons, only suckers play fair.

The rolling over-and-playing dead-act that Democrats have been doing for Bush has emboldened the GOP even as they're falling apart. They're going to try to steal another election, and the Bush/Mukasey DOJ is going to help them do it.

This is going to get ugly, but it doesn't matter because nobody's ever going to see it thanks to our compliant media. Reporter Adam Nossiter can't bring himself to mention that these are the same people who set Siegelman up but he does drag his ass around to the supposed "witnesses" and to dutifully interview them and he makes sure you know that the officials being charged are black. This report escapes the scurrilous only because this time the Pubs have produced witnesses (even though most of them admit they've allowed their votes to be bought for years, which doesn't exactly make them credible). Nevertheless, ignoring the history of these tainted GOP officials amounts to siding with them. I don't expect any other press to be any more skeptical in this, the age of GOP reporter-stenographers.

Speculators Under the Gun - Finally

Diana Henriques, a business reporter for the NYT, makes it her business in this piece to run the Fear Factor in favor of commodities speculators with a fairly broad brush. After all, we need them.

Uh-huh.

First there is the "Pity the Poor Victim" trilogy.

In Washington, financial speculators have fat targets on their backs.

They are being blamed for high gas prices, soaring grocery bills and volatile commodity markets, and lawmakers are lashing out at market regulators for not cracking down on them more vigorously.

“You study it, but you don’t act against this incredible increase in speculation,” Senator Carl Levin complained to a senior official of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission at a recent Senate hearing. “Unless the C.F.T.C. is going to act against speculation, we don’t have a cop on the beat.”

Just this week, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, said he was working on a proposal to ban large institutional investors from the commodity markets entirely. The same day, the Bush administration endorsed another Senate proposal to create a new federal interagency task force to investigate commodity speculation. At least four public hearings have explored the topic in just the last two months, and Senator Lieberman will hold another session on June 24.

Golly. Maybe they're "being blamed" because, well, they're responsible. Huh? Even stolid Holy Joe is getting into the act. Why, it's...it's...persecution, that's what it is. I mean, they work hard and provide a valuable service. Huh?

Although it is common in tough financial times to blame the speculators, this escalating hostility toward them is starting to worry people with years of knowledge about how commodity markets work. Because without speculators, they say, these markets do not work at all.

Speculators, people willing to risk their capital in search of high profits, are central to healthy commodity markets, they say, and broad-brush restrictions on them could damage markets that are already under pressure from rising global demand for food and fuel.

Scapegoats! That's what they are. Why, without them OUR ECONOMY WOULD CRASH AND BURN!! We're blaming them and they may not even be the sole cause.

Even in Washington, there is widespread agreement that no single factor is responsible for rising food and energy prices. The hungry, high-growth economies of India and China are fundamentally affecting worldwide demand, while uncooperative weather and government policies on trade and ethanol are among the many factors affecting supply.

That's it! It's China's fault. THE YELLOW PERIL!! Our speculators are innocent!

Or it's (I love it) the weather. Really, folks, there's nothing going on here but common FREE MARKET FORCES. There's no <whisper> greed </whisper> here. Just good, wholesome, American business. And those prices? And those mag-ni-ficent oil profits? And those guys betting they'll make oodles of $$$ on starvation? They're just classic American businessmen taking advantage of an opportunity no matter what the cost.

To other people.

[B]eneath all these external factors is the simple seesaw of the marketplace: For every person who buys oil at $130 a barrel, there must be another person willing to sell at that price — and, odds are, at least one of them will be a speculator.

See? Normal. Nothing to be worried about. Everything's fine. Back to your homes. [beat] What was that?

In a statement this week, Walter Lukken, the C.F.T.C. chairman, said the commission was determined to see that commodity prices were set “by the fundamental forces of supply and demand, rather than by abusive or manipulative practices.”

Abuse? Manipulation? Well, in the old days, maybe....

The commodity market has seen its share of manipulation scandals — allegations that executives at J. R. Simplot had tried to fix the Maine potato market in 1976, allegations that the Hunt family of Texas had manipulated the silver market in 1979 and, just last year, BP’s settlement of federal charges that it had manipulated propane prices.

Certainly, there have been unusual price spikes in commodity markets, like the short, sharp roller-coaster ride that hit the cotton market in early March and the more recent gyrations in the oil markets that have alarmed some market participants.

But there's an even greater danger: if you take the speculators out of the commodities market, they might start fooling around with something else. EEK!

The stage of the speculation that is alarming Washington is the commodity futures market, which trades a financial derivative called a futures contract, an agreement for the future delivery of a fixed amount of a commodity at a certain price. The prices at which these futures contracts change hands are the benchmark for pricing commodities around the world.

In essence, speculators are the only voluntary players in the commodity futures markets. They could use their billions to dabble in currency markets or buy distressed real estate or pile up Treasury bonds.

(emphasis added)

So calm down. Speculators are like bats - they may be scary but they eat all the mosquitoes.

So speculators become the ballast in the market, making the contrary trades, taking on the risks the hedgers want to shed, reacting quickly when news jolts the markets and, most important, creating liquidity by pouring in enough money to allow everyone to make very large trades quickly without causing wild price swings.

See? Speculators GOOD! Speculators GOOD!

Oy.

This isn't propaganda, it's just a one-sided, bi-polar, good/evil view that doesn't allow for middle ground. Like, maybe, you can have speculators but keep them from running amok? Why is that such a hard concept for business reporters - and conservatives - to understand?

Fannie Mae: Loss of $$$2BIL$$$ Cheers Wall St

How's that again?

The Washington Post, where they love Bush's war but they're not so sure about his economy:

Fannie Loses $2.2 Billion As Home Prices Fall

Fannie Mae, one of the main sources of mortgage funding and a barometer of the housing market, yesterday reported that home prices fell faster than it expected during the first quarter, contributing to a $2.2 billion loss for the company.

The company had been predicting that the toll from defaults and foreclosures would worsen this year, and yesterday it revised its forecast to predict even higher credit losses ahead.

The loss came as the strain of the recent credit crunch continued to roil the housing and finance industries. Yesterday, the Swiss banking giant UBS reported an $11 billion quarterly loss and said it would cut 5,500 jobs. Meanwhile, the Legg Mason investment firm lost more than $250 million in its fourth quarter as it set aside money to support its money-market funds.

Fannie Mae and its federal regulator responded to the deteriorating situation by announcing steps that could strengthen the company and the housing market -- or put the finance giant in an even deeper hole.

Now the NYT, which also loves Bush's war but thinks the economy is swell, too, if everybody would, you know, not PANIC!

Fannie Mae Wins Cheers Despite Loss

Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest buyer of home loans, gave investors little reason to cheer Tuesday, announcing a $2.2 billion quarterly loss and a dividend cut, and warning of steeper losses ahead.

But investors celebrated anyway, bidding up the stock 9 percent, to close at $30.81.

Their optimism stemmed from the belief that Fannie Mae is in a position to pick and choose among the best and safest loans currently in the marketplace. The company, which buys mortgages from banks and other lenders, announced it would raise $6 billion in new funds to purchase additional loans and shore up a listing balance sheet.

“As the market recovers, we will be a prime beneficiary,” Fannie Mae’s president, Daniel C. Mudd, said in a conference call with analysts Tuesday morning. When the housing market finally stabilizes, the company will “feast” on the mortgages.

Like zombies "feast" on dead flesh? or vampires "feast" on blood?

Wall St, like any vamp, looooooves a blood bath. They sort of look at it as a Filene's Bargain Basement Sale. I guess. I mean, that's the vibe I get from the NYT. Why, the deeper and faster the economy tanks, the more they think it proves, once again, that The Bush is a financial genius. Why, the man has saved the economy by destroying it! Just wait 'til those bargains hit the shelves next year!

It's obscene, a little, thinks the more cautious WaPo. I mean, you know, baaaad things are happening here and they're getting worse. Sometimes it seems the end isn't in sight, that the bottom is in fact bottomless. Doesn't that, like, bother you?

But the NYT, perfectly reflecting Wall St's eternal optimism in the face of catastrophe (especially a catastrophe it helped to bring about), shouts, "Nay Nay, naysayer. 'Tis but a drop in yon bucket, a flash in ye pan, a mere bump in the highway to Prosperity and Wealth."

Yes. Well. Unfortunately, friend, that "bump" is the sound your body makes when they run over it on the way to their Prosperity. Try to remember as the wheels squash your noggin flat as an old raccoon that you're but sacrificing yourself for the greater good.

Theirs.

Now. Don't you feel better?

eVoting to be in the News via a Media Advisory I Just Wrote

Doylestown, PA - 

ON Monday  March 5 in the Pearl S. Buck room of the Doylestown Free Library at 1:30PM,  the Coalition of Voting Integrity, along with Dr. Rebecca Mercuri and Dr. Dan Lopresti, will announce the recent purchase of and plans for discarded Danaher/Shouptronic and Sequoia Advance full-face electronic voting machines.

The Danaher/Shouptronic and Sequoia full-face voting machines were purchased for $25 each from counties in Tennessee and North Carolina, which had discarded the machines. The machines were picked up by members of CVI and delivered to leading electronic voting security experts, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, Dr. Dan Lopresti of Lehigh University and members of the Princeton research laboratory, which recently garnered national attention when it repeatedly demonstrated the vulnerability and hackability of electronic voting machines including  the Diebold AccuVote-TS machine and Sequoia’s AVC .   The Danaher/Shouptonic and Sequoia machines will be examined by all three researchers for various operational issues including why full-face voting machines have consistently demonstrated the highest amout of lost votes (undervotes) in the nation. 

“Electronic voting is still a controversial issue,” said Dr. Dan Lopresti. “Given its fundamental importance to our democracy, there are far too many unanswered questions. That's why we're so excited at Lehigh to now have examples of three such machines used in real elections around the country, including a  Danaher / Shouptronic Model 1242 like the kind used in Bucks County. We plan to take a close look at these machines to try to figure out why certain problems, including reports of chronic undervoting in the Danaher system, continue to persist.”  He continued, “This opportunity to study e-voting hardware and software is extraordinary since local elections officials have generally forbidden independent evaluations of their equipment.”

Legal counsel will also be present to address questions concerning pending legal actions and the significance of the planned research into full-face voting machines.

Excellent photo opportunity: At the press conference, CVI will introduce it’s own Danaher/Shouptronic machine, “Shoupy,” which will be covered in band-aids to send the message that all touchscreen machines are flawed stopgap devices that do nothing to address the country’s voting crisis and indeed make it worse.  Shoupy will also sport a sign reading  “So Easy and So Wrong.”

The Danaher/Shouptronic machines are used in six counties in Pennsylvania, including Bucks, Philadelphia, Delaware and Berks.  The Sequoia Advantage electronic machine is used in Montgomery County among others. The Danaher/Shouptronic machine alone represents the second largest block of Pennsylvania voters.  Together, the Danaher/Shouptronic and Sequoia systems control enough Pennsylvania votes to have a significant impact on the outcome of any state and national election.

The press conference will also feature a live debut of her great new song, "If You Want To Be A Voter (The Ballad of Sarasota) by Buckingham musician Lori Rosolowsky.  The song incorporates historic American battleground references as it chronicles the Sarasota County 13th Congressional District election in November 2006, in which 18,000 (15%) of votes casts were not counted.  The election was decided by 369 votes.   The legal and social implications for that election in Bucks County and nationally will also be discussed.  Free downloads of the song and lyrics are available at www.voiceofthevoters.org

CVI co-founders Mary Ann Gould and Ruth Matheny will

· Announce a major new policy position regarding electronic voting machines and pending legislation. 

· Call for a county, state and nationwide ban of touchscreen voting machines.

· Call on the Commissioners of Bucks and other counties to move away from a defense of the purchase of DRE’s, since data is available every week to prove that they do not work, and to instead work together to replace the DREs for both financial and security reasons.

**********************************

WHAT: Press conference to announce CVI's purchase of Danaher/Shouptronic and Sequoia Advantage full-face voting machines.

WHEN: MONDAY, March 6   1:30PM

WHERE: Pearl S. Buck Room, Doylestown Free Library  150 S. Pine Street  Doylestown, PA 18901-4932

**************************************************

Background: 

Read about the Coalition for Voting Integrity at www.SaveOurVote.com

Listen to CVI's nationally known radio show, Voice of the Voters: the Power and Responsibility of Democracy via our archives.

Listen to leaders from the voting issues community to the halls of Congress, who have been interviewed on Voice of the Voters, the Power and Responsibility of Democracy, including Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12), Rep. Ron Paul (TX-14),  voting rights activist and academic, Dr. Avi Rubin, civil rights attorney Jonn Bonifaz, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Dr. Gordon Wood and University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Steve Freeman. 

Three relevant reports from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU:

The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World at

Most broadly, the report found:

· All three voting systems have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state, and local elections.

· The most troubling vulnerabilities of each system can be substantially remedied if proper countermeasures are implemented at the state and local level.

· Few jurisdictions have implemented any of the key countermeasures that could make the least difficult attacks against voting systems much more difficult to execute successfully.

The Machinery of Democracy: Voting System Usability at

The Brennan Center report concluded that two of the most commonly purchased electronic voting systems today are better at recording voter intentions than older systems like the punchcard system used in Florida in 2000.  At the same time, the report faulted one electronic voting system under consideration in New York and in use in parts of New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. This system, the “full face DRE,” continues to unduly hamper voters’ ability to easily and accurately cast a ballot for their preferred candidate without undue burden, confusion and delay.

Among the report’s key findings:

Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) and Scrolling Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems are more accurate at recording voter intention than older voting systems. In 2004, residual vote rates were less than 1% for both technologies.

Full-face DRE systems continue to be plagued with an unacceptably high residual vote rate. In 2000, 2002 and 2004, it exceeded that of either PCOS or scrolling DRE systems.

Residual vote rates among voters earning less then $25,000 are higher on full faced DRE’s (2.8%), than on either PCOS (1.4%) or Scrolling DRE’s (1.3%).

The Machinery of Democracy: Voting System Security, Accessibility, Usability, and Cost at

The report is the final product of the first comprehensive, empirical analysis of electronic voting systems in the United States. It comes after nearly two years of study with many of the nation’s leading academics, election officials, economists, and security, usability and accessibility experts.

Up until this point, there has been surprisingly little empirical study of voting systems in the areas of security, accessibility, usability, and cost. The result is that jurisdictions make purchasing decisions and adopt laws and procedures that have little to do with their overall goals.

New Mexico also chose to discard their Danaher/Shouptronic machines due to undervotes ranging from 6 to 16 times the national average and in comparison to optical scan machines during the 2004 election.

What I Learned from Ryan Lizza This Morning

1. Manly Men win elections.
  a.  Swearing and missing body parts are characteristics of a Manly Man.

2. The 2006 elections results were  "milestones" because they marked the return of Manly Men to the Democratic Party.

3.  Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emmuel make Lizza's nipples hard and they know how to find Manly Men.

4.  Howard Dean, Tammy Duckworth and Paul Hackett don't exist.

5.  Obama and Hillary are NOT Manly Men

6. If a party runs Manly Men, there is a danger that women will not vote for them because girls like babies and pearls and Manly Men like football, muscles and wars.

7. The opinions of two populist freshman Senators are worth those of one unelected, establishment, DLC strategist. (James Carville).

8. Manly Men are the salvation and ruination of the party's hopes in 2008.   

You can get a much more cohesive look at the real issue of the 2006 "Fightin' Dems" here.   For example: (50-State emphasis mine)

As one sign of where the interests are vested this year, the Republican National Committee did not tally up the number of Republican veteran challengers nationwide, nor did any conservative activist group, preferring instead to pooh-pooh Democratic touting of veterans as a political ploy. The number, I surmised, is somewhere between two and three-dozen. That’s smaller than the cadre of 57 Democratic military vets, but then, this was a purely defensive year for Republicans in which incumbent protection was deemed paramount and the recruitment of desirable newcomers was all but ignored. Democrats, by contrast, were on the offensive almost everywhere with new blood.

...

So, it seems that the Democratic Party sensed a need for an alternative to President Bush’s Iraq message and found a large part of it in the “fighting” image provided by military-vet candidates. A number of these candidates had already declared themselves at the grassroots level. The media was looking for such a trend, sensing public discontent over Iraq in polls and wanting to cover the story aggressively. Democrats knew that they could help narrow what was left of the national security perception gap between themselves and Republicans (they didn’t need to, it turns out: Because of Iraq, the gap had already narrowed or even reversed to a Democratic advantage in most polls by November 2006).

Now how hard was that?

UPDATE:  In the comments here, you can read about an erstwhile candidate's experiences with the Manly Rahm, who knew about Mark Foley in 2005 and apparently didn't do anything about it.  Also at MyDD.

UPDATE: Shakes read Lizza too.

I'm Typing This on an HP dv6119 Notebook

What's up with NBC?  The Office, Studio 60 and 30 Rock all talked about product placement this week.  The Office featured a cute in-show demostration of a Staples shredder.  Studio 60 took an hour to figure out how to tell us that product placement is simply an accurate reflection of our advertisement-filled lives and so what's the big deal?   (Admit it, you're using a product right now, aren't you?)   30 Rock, the other show about a late night televsion comedy sketch show, was the funniest:

Jack: Look, we all love Snapple, Lord knows I do, but focus.  We are talking about product integration.

Liz Lemon: We are not your shills.

Jack (turning to his assistant): Oh, oh, I'm sorry.  That's right.  They're artists ... like James Joyce or Strindberg.  Get real kids, you write skits mocking our presidents to fill time between car commercials.

And at something like 2am this morning, there was a show on spoofing a sports news program (not Sports Night) which was all about the network demanding that all interviewed athletes work the names of sponsors into their answers.   "And we have, like, the worst sponsors," said one of the reporters.  That set up a funny bit involving  Tom Glavine, a funeral home and a dry cleaners. 

I don't mind product placement or optimizing the backward synergy flow or whatever it's called now.  Frankly,  I'm not sure when we got the idea that the Texaco Star Theater model of television broadcasting was a mortal sin, but we did.   That's the good thing about being a cynic, you can't have your heartbroken by stuff like finding out that Proctor and Gamble produces Guidling Light and that's why all the kitchens are stocked with P&G products. 

In fact, I'm so enured to this kind of thing that  I even laughed during this past election when Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick was being interviewed on a local radio station.  It was one of the hours devoted to him and his campaign and broadcast as a normal call-in show.  (Murphy was invited and didn't show.) They came out of a commercial about an auto body shop or something like that and the host asked the congressman if he had any experience with that particular establishment.  That led into a nicely delivered story from the congressman all about how he remembers talking to the man, who owns that business, blah, blah, blah, vote for me! 

If that kind of infotainment is okay, then I can handle a character in a television show hauling around an Apple notebook, driving a well-lit Buick, or dancing with a can of oil for that matter.