dlblount1 Member since March 13, 2008

Staff Reporter |
Posted March 23, 2009 11:39 AM













President
Barack Obama struck back at criticism from former Vice President Dick
Cheney this weekend in an interview broadcast on CBS's "60 Minutes."
Cheney had argued that the closing of the Guantanamo detention
center in Cuba would make America more vulnerable to attack, but Obama
dismissed that criticism in an interview with CBS's Steve Kroft.
"I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney," Obama said. "Not
surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at
the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile
our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture,
with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong
lesson from history."
Obama also challenged the Bush administration's argument that its
extra-judicial detention policies were necessary to protect America.
"The facts don't bear him out," the president said, adding that
Cheney's philosophy "has done incredible damage to our image and
position in the world."
After all these years how many convictions actually came out of
Guantanamo?" Obama asked Kroft rhetorically. "How many terrorists have
actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being
promoted by Vice President Cheney?"
President Obama flatly argued that the Bush approach "hasn't made us
safer" and has instead become "a great advertisement for anti-American
sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of
Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the
world."See interview below.

Since this video of the First Dance hit YouTube and The Daily Beast,
it's been on repeat all day. If you haven't seen it twenty times, stop
what you're doing and watch the electricity between our president and
first lady.All in attendance at the Neighborhood Ball were awe-struck and millions
watching the event at home were glued to the television. Even Beyonce
got emotional once she finished serenading the couple. Today, celebrity
sites like Perez Hilton and The Insider can't stop chatting about that intimate moment between Michelle and Barack. News and local publications such as New York Magazine, Newsday and Examiner.com can't help but get sentimental, too.

Saying he did not initiate or authorize anyone at any
time to promise anything to Governor Blagojevich on his behalf, Rep.
Jesse Jackson Jr. today strongly denied any improper
association with the arrested governor.
In a news conference held Wednesday afternoon, Jackson
said he was "shocked and saddened" to learn about Governor
Blagojevich's arrest.
Jackson said he rejects and denounces pay-to-play politics and has "no involvement whatsoever in any wrongdoing."
Jackson took no questions after reading his statement
but did make a personal point at the end of his remarks. The text of
Rep. Jackson's prepared remarks is below.
 
STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN JESSE L. JACKSON, JR. ABOUT THE ARREST OF GOVERNOR BLAGOJEVICH
Wednesday, December 10, 2008 4:15 p.m. E.S.T.
I was shocked and saddened to learn that Illinois
Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested yesterday by federal law
enforcement officials.   The details of the corruption charges
were staggering and stunning.  If these allegations are proved true,
I'm appalled by the pay-to-play schemes hatched at the highest levels
of Illinois state government.   I
think that I can speak for all Illinois residents when I express
outrage at the thought that Illinois' now-vacant senate seat may have
been put up for sale, offered to the highest bidder.   Sadly,
yesterday's criminal complaint casts another dark cloud over a state
already beleaguered by corruption and scandal. Clearly, the people of
Illinois deserve better. They deserve to have their trust and
confidence in government restored.   In light of yesterday's
criminal indictment, I believe that the Governor -- in the best
interest of our state -- should resign and forfeit his authority to
make the senate appointment. The fact is: anyone appointed by the
Governor at this point would be too severely tainted to serve the state
effectively and without suspicion in the U.S. Senate.   Meanwhile, the Governor's fate is in the hands of the justice system.  We must allo

The president-elect looks to reassure the financial markets and the public with swift Cabinet appointments and aggressive policy plans. By Peter Wallsten















Reporting
from Washington -- With a series of forceful actions in recent days,
amid an almost unprecedented set of challenges, Barack Obama has taken
an unusual step for a president-elect: attempting to alter the
country's perilous course even before he takes office.
The

This is one of the most profound video made to date about this historic election. The video was produced by Reggie Montgomery of Hitman Music Production Company (reggie@hitmanmusicproduction.de).

Written by Joan Walsh of Salon, Inc.John McCain hit a new low Monday with his claim about a suddenly
"revealed" interview with Barack Obama from 2001 proving that Obama
favors "redistributive change" and that Obama is a "redistributor"
(sorry, but that's not going to make it onto a bumper sticker). Did
McCain or anyone in his campaign listen to the interview? Did Matt
Drudge before linking to it? Open Salon's Kris Broughton broke it down in all its complexity earlier today, and Tom Schaller had it here.Obam

By Ari Melber The only thing more damaging to John McCain than Keating Economics is Bush Economics.


That's the idea behind a devastating new attack ad that the DNC
launched Sunday. To kick off the last full week before the election,
Democrats are stressing McCain's firm support for Bush's economic
policies with a web ad featuring a fleet of senior McCain surrogates.
Some took to the TV studios to tout McCain's Bush-like approach to
taxes and growth, while others are shown, cornered and empty-handed,
when

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) sat for an interview
with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. In response to a question sent
to the network by a third grader at a local elementary school about
what the Vice President does, Palin erroneously argued that the Vice
President is “in charge of the United States Senate“:

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”
PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re
in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to t

By David Neiwert





The L.A. Times' James Rainey took out after CNN's Rick Sanchez this morning for his segment yesterday in which he interviewed me about the Salon piece I co-wrote with Max Blumenthal about Sarah Palin's past dalliances with Alaska's far-right fringe crowd.
Writes Rainey:
But Sanchez and the CNN crew instead ran their report
off into the underbrush, reaching a low when the anchor tried to draw a
parallel between the Alaska party and the forces

Writing for the Daily Beast, Michael Kinsley relays a disturbing story about John McCain from Jeff Dearth, former publisher of the New Republic, when Dearth and McCain attended a magazine industry conference at a casino hotel in Puerto Rico in 2005:

McCain's game is craps. So is Jeff Dearth's. Jeff was at the table when McCain showed up and happily made room for him. Apparently there is some kind of rule or tradition in craps that everyone's hands are supposed to be above the table when the dice are ab

(updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V)

Before it became clear that Sarah Palin had never heard of it, nobody -- including the presidential candidates themselves
-- ever had difficulty answering questions about what they believed
about the Bush Doctrine, nor ever suggested that this Doctrine was some
amorphous, impossible-to-understand, abstract irrelevancy. Quite the
contrary, despite some differences over exactly what it means, it was
widely understood to constitute a radical dep

Hannity Freaks on McCain-Edwards Sex Link




Sean Hannity lost control of himself and his show on Tuesday night,
after co-host Alan Colmes compared John Edwards' infidelity to John
McCain's affair. Usually, the two hosts of "Hannity & Colmes" take
turns questioning guests and carefully avoid debating each other, but
Hannity made a rare departure
to repeatedly yell that McCain's affair was somehow acceptable because
it occurred after he was tortured for five and a half years in Vietnam.
This clip does not t

I don’t know if this is going to be a continued strategy of the Obama
campaign, but if it is then this is a great strategy. Take a McCain ad
and debunk it. This one is about McCain’s latest attack ad, the one
portraying Obama as a celebrity, the one that doesn’t include Paris and
Britney.



So, hopefully you bothered to actually watch the whole video and would like to learn more about Obama’s tax plan. Make sure you check out the sites and PDF files below to know more about the candidate’s tax

An ad for The Paris Hilton Presidential Campaign. Paid for by Funny Or Die.



See Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad and more funny videos on FunnyOrDie.comSee more funny videos at Funny or Die

Take My Wife, Please!

By Josh Marshall

We're trying to find out a bit more about the Bikini Beauty Pageant at the Buffalo Chip,
where John McCain showed up and offered up wife Cindy as a contestant.
ESPN says the event is topless and "occasionally bottomless". Actually their description is worth quoting in full ...

Buffalo Chip has a reputation for that sort of thing. It
holds a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night, which is essentially a
topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. During

Sometimes, what gets lost amid all the hootenanny over which
candidate the media is "in love" with is that there's no real evidence
that anyone benefits when a reporter or a talking head fawns all over
an electoral contender. More often than not, you just get a bunch of
water-muddying ads, such as the ones that seem to blame Barack Obama
for being a press darling despite having something of an aloof, and
often prickly, relationship with them.

But it doesn't take affection, or leg-tingles, to do what Andrea