Everything You Know Is Wrong

I shouldn't allow my personal problems get in the way of blogging but there you have it...

A diary on DKOS pointed me to this, Ann Coulter showing up to stump for Bob Beauprez and the event netted - ZERO - dollars for the Beauprez campaign (from ColoradoConfidential):

“We found out the hard way,” says former Beauprez for Gov campaign chief Steve Truebner, “that Ann Coulter is not a major draw for donors.”

Nary a one showed up, according to Truebner, leaving Ms. Coulter and Mrs. Beauprez -- the candidate himself was in D.C., working his day job -- to hobnob in the Paramount’s 2d-floor lobby with about a dozen earnest but penniless campaign volunteers, plus some KOA listeners who’d won free tickets to the Coulter show from the station and just happened to be in the vicinity.

Smiles were flashed, photos were taken, and cheese/crackers were eaten, just like at a real campaign event. The only things missing were the $1,000 checks.

Despite attempts by unamerican radicals to desecrate our flag and wipe their collective fat ass with the constitution, stupidity failed by a single vote, keeping America safe from drooling fools.

Unfortunately, a flag-burning amendment is not the last refuge of these scoundrels and we should expect a long summer of base pandering presented meretriciously with a straight face.

The good news is, the Dems have the upper hand if they play smart. The GOP is playing the politics of desperation card and the country is fed up. More, later...

In my blogging experience (since the halcyon days of 2002), it's sometimes Feast or Famine. I returned yesterday from self-imposed famine in Longmont only to find I had nothing to say. Today, there's too much to say and so I'll try and fit it all in.
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Although the latest poll has Bill Ritter up by 5 points, the race is far from a slam dunk for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter.

ProgressNowAction has put up a wonderful site - BothWaysBob.org - illustrating what a wretched liar the Republicans are backing for governor.
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News on another local race: Jay Fawcett (CO CD-5) picked up an endorsement from yet another US miltary general, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry H. (Hugh) Shelton.

Jay's exemplary military record makes him a strong candidate in a heavilly red district. It's an uphill battle even though none of the candidates facing the primary are very strong. A Fawcett victory would be a minor miracle and a huge boost for the Democratic party.

More on this later....

One would think Wayne Allard (whose constituency includes one of the largest US Army bases in the country, NORAD, the Air Force Academy, and several other military bases) would have voted soundly against the "amnesty for insurgents" bill that was soundly defeated in the US Seanate Tuesday. Then again, Allard is a lame-duck and not seeking re-election, so I suppose he believes it doesn't matter how he votes.

Any service person in this area who meets Allard should spit in Allard's sorry face, the way Allard spit on the grave of heroes. Furthermore, El Paso county Dems need to make some noise regarding this vote and use it as a heavy cudgel on whomever Colorado Republicans pick to succeed sorry-ass Allard. As Digby says (and you need to read the entire post):

We should... ram it down the Republican party's throats. Here we had a day when two poor American schmucks were just found tortured and killed. We have no moral authority left with which to even condemn the torture --- after all, we've made torture cool again. And yet 19 Republican senators voted for amnesty for their killers. I ask you to contemplate what the Republicans would do to us if the shoe were reversed --- regardless of the merits. You don't have to think very long do you?

Politically, this should have been Dubai all over again, a media firestorm, forcing the Republican rank and file to see what was being done in their name. Rove is going to run on the patriot card again, calling us cowards for wantin' to cun 'n run, and here they are proposing to forgive the killers of 2500 Americans while we still have 140,000 more of them sitting over there like sitting ducks for no good reason. We should hang this around the Republican Party's neck and light it afire.

On the post is a very angry letter from a soldier in Iraq (one I hope is based out of Ft. Carson) and it spells out trenchantly just one more example of how BushCo has mismanaged this war.

Firedoglake has nore than I can say:

Yee Haw! The Codpiece is back with a vengeance! And guess who can’t keep his grubby little hands away from it. You guessed it: Joe Klein.

Via John Amato:
"I was up there in the cockpit of that airplane coming into Baghdad," the President told the press corps assembled on the White House lawn after his dash into and out of the war zone last week. "It was an unbelievable, unbelievable feeling." In fact, George W. Bush’s body language—let’s call it the full jaunty—was reminiscent of his last, infamous cockpit trip, onto the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 to announce the "end" of major combat operations in Iraq, beneath a mission accomplished sign. His public language is more cautious than it used to be, but he seemed downright frothy in a private session with the congressional leadership after his press conference.

He called the new Iraqi Defense Minister an "interesting cat" and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the deceased al-Qaeda leader, "a dangerous dude." Bush had reason, finally, to strut. The al-Zarqawi raid had netted valuable intelligence data that were enabling U.S. and Iraqi forces to roll up al-Qaeda cells—the best haul since the capture of Saddam Hussein, which made it possible for U.S. forces to disable much of the dictator’s inner circle in early 2004. What’s more, the first elected Iraqi government was finally fully in place. Back home, Karl Rove was officially unindicted in the CIA leak case, and the Democrats were busy being Democrats-divided, defensive and confused about the war, with Bush’s favorite punching bag, Senator John Kerry, leading the charge..

That’s right. Bush is stuck in the mid-30’s, his brain narrowly escaped indictment and he had to mount the most top secret trip since Kissinger went to China (someone left the cakewalk in the rain) yet Klein is drooling and panting over the president’s pants again, getting all hot and bothered when the frat-boy in chief calls the Iraq defense Minister an "interesting cat" and al-Zarqawi a "dangerous dude." Why it’s almost as if Joe got invited to a kegger with the BMOC’s and got to hang with them and "rap" all night about "chicks" (or "dangerous dudes", whatever.)

Perhaps someone can explain to me the strange male attraction to George W. Bush. I have never encountered anything quite like it. From day one, DC nerds like Klein have had massive man-crushes on Junior, describing him as "loose-hipped" and "swaggering" and showing all manner of strange obsession with his masculine body language. Klein seems to barely be able to contain his squeal as he writes about Bush’s "strut" and his "full jaunty" (which sounds suspiciously like "full monty" — giving full rise, as it were, to speculation about what Klein was thinking about when he came up with it.) But, can someone please tell me what in the hell he’s talking about when says that Bush was "downright frothy?" What in god’s name was Klein doing while he wrote this column? (Don’t go there…)

Seriously, this has been a huge problem since the beginning of the Bush administration. And it tracks quite handily with the opposite reactions among the chattering geeks during the Clinton years. Bubba was female friendly (if you know what I mean) and was the object of a great deal of derisive coverage for his tomcat vibe by the priggish DC press. What worked in his favor out in the country — his smarts ‘n sexual charisma — made the Washington media squirm like a bunch of little old ladies caught by accident at a Marilyn Manson concert. And then along came the codpiece and they all fell in love. Wassup with that?

On the substance of Klein’s column, such as it is, after he extolls the vitues of Bush’s manly manliness for two paragraphs he points out that his policies are all wrong and that Karl Rove is a lying sack of manure — but that Democrats are icky so we need to stay the course. John Kerry says we should leave by the end of the year and that’s crazy Democratic defeatist talk. Hawkish, man’s man Klein, on the other hand, thinks we shouldn’t get out for another six months. You do the math.

It’s a typically shallow analysis that could have been written in his sleep, but the first two paragraphs are carefully crafted observations of the president’s confidence, demeanor and manly assurance. (How many people can manage to get past the first paragraph of any Joe Klein column, do you think?) It’s the image of Bush as some sort of cowboy hero that kept him propped up for so long (if you’ll excuse the expression) and which the press corps has been dying to get another lingering look at. They love their man when he’s all sweaty and swaggering. Preferably in a tight jumpsuit.

But this will do too.

Joe’s screensaver:

Pay no attention to the transmitter on his back.

Many of you have probably heard that corporate shill Mike McCurry had his ass handed to him on Friday by Amazon.com's Paul Misener at debate hosted by George Washington University. If you haven't watched the debate, you can see the entire video at Politics TV (or just watch the Q&A where McCurry really gets slaughtered). You can also read ">some the transcript at SaveTheInternet to see how the Telco's argument does it's counter-clockwise spiral down the bowl but the entertainment value of seeing McCurry get soundly spanked is worth watching.

If you're unsure about how the Net Neutrality goes, here's the down & dirty talking point. The big Telcos (AT&T, Bell South, Verizon, etc.) claim that unless they can run the internet their way, innovation is dead, and the internet will suck forever. The big Telcos are calling Net Neutrality "regulating the internet".

What a crock of shit. What the big Telcos want to do is create a monopoly for themselves, rake in money on services that are currently free (by setting up "toll booths" for those services - such as blogging, video streaming, etc.) and potentially determine which content will be provided to users. In order to argue this, McCurry and the Telcos have resorted to outright lies, claiming that Net Neutrality is an issue advocated by the far left and that if the Net Neutrality amendment passes, traffic on the internet will bog down in an increasingly overwhelmed network.

Both claims are nonsense, desperate words to cover fatcat asses. Net Neutrality is supported across the political spectrum, as Eli Parser points out,

Telecom companies also like to paper Congress with propaganda implying that Internet freedom is somehow a left-wing issue. Tell that to the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Instapundit, the business executives, and the many libertarians who are fighting right along with MoveOn, the inventors of the Internet, thousands of bloggers, and the SavetheInternet.com Coalition in support of Net Neutrality.

As Craig Fields of the Gun Owners says, when the left and right agree on an issue like Internet freedom, "it's been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American." On the proposal to destroy Net Neutrality, most Americans would probably agree.

The canard that internet traffic will slow to a crawl (and will squelch innovation) is a laugh, pure and unadulterated bullshit. In fact, there is so much infrastructure in place, the companies decades away from using it all. As Fiber Optic Association (FOA) president Jim Hayes said to streamingmedia.com,

"The backbone was terribly overbuilt. Ninety-three percent of all the fiber that’s been installed is still unused."

However, you can decide for yourself and read S 2917 in its entirety.

The bill goes to committee this Thursday; Colorado voters don't have a dog in this fight at that point. However, should Net Neutrality pass the Commerce Committee, Senators Allard and Salazar need to be urged to support the Snowe/Dorgan amendment AKA “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006." Good local coverage of this issue is over at Coloradopols (where I got this contact info and directions):
them.

Contact Senator Ken Salazar: Click here to email or call:
Phone: (202) 224-5852
Fax: (202) 228-5036

Contact Senator Wayne Allard: Click here to email or call:
Phone: (202) 224-5941
Fax: (202) 224-6471

If you email, be sure to click the ‘High-Tech/Telecommunications’ choice so that it is directed to the correct place.

As I mentioned, there's good coverage of this over at Coloradopols; you'll also want to catch what's written over at Squarestate.net as they have more information and some lively discussion in the comments.

It's your internet - for now. If you don't call or email, you have no one to blame but yourself if you start getting charged "tolls" and find that you can't access your favorite site. You have the power but you have to fight to keep it.

The matter of Net Neutrality should be a no brainer - they have enough pipe to keep us phat for a long damn time. The jist of this is who is a corporate whore.

Obviously, Joel Hefley (who voted against Net Neutralty) is a corporate whore; he voted AGAINST Net Nuetralty. Give him a call and say he's a shill:

Congressman Joel Hefley
Phone: 202-225-4422

Then, call these guys and let them know that if they vote against Net Nuetrality, you'll put bags of dogshit on their porch, light it on fire, ring the bell and run like hell;

Senator Wayne Allard
Phone: 202-224-5941

Senator Ken Salazar
Phone: 202-224-5852

Get busy - CALL; our freedom depends on it.