J. Edgar "No Left Turns" Hoover must be smiling.  If you thought the response was bad for the DNC then this is much worse via Glenn Greenwald writes:

Sunday Aug. 31, 2008 11:46 EDTFederal government involved in raids on protesters

(update below)

As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue -- see this video of the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice, seizing the bus and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway -- it appears increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that "the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday....

I could not agree more with Glenn when he states that "we cherish our 'freedoms'" but despise those who exercise those "freedoms" like  the right to peacable assemble.

Is this what a Republican in the oval office has come to?

Matt, Thinkprogress.org, writes:

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said that President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to be elected.

However, “if the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out,” Kristol said, reinforcing the fact that McCain is offering a third Bush term on Iran.

So it has come down to:  Vote Obama and Bush will bomb Iran.

From AP (h/t to Eschaton):

NEW YORK (AP) — Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was seen by more than 38 million people.

Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final "American Idol" or the Academy Awards this year. Obama talked before a live audience of 80,000 people in Denver.

I usually scan Buzzflash.com once a day, and this little item came up which is a continuation of the assassination plot by four people.  Chris Stephen, News.scotsman.com, writes:

THE three men arrested over a reported plot to kill the US Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, have ties to the white supremacist group Aryan Nations, police said last night...

All three belong to Aryan Nations, according to Victor Ross, the police chief in Glendale, a suburb of Denver where one of the suspects was arrested. The other two were held in Aurora, another suburb.

"We don't usually have that number of Aryan Nations people here,'' Mr Ross said. "It was suspicious to us. We turned everything over to the federal authorities."

I completely agree with the comments written to my previous post by Steve and RalphT that U.S. Attorney Troy Eid to resign by downplaying the seriousness of an assassination plot to kill Barack Obama.  In Eid's own words, from the Herald Sun:

US Attorney Troy Eid said the men -- who were all high on the drug methamphetamine when arrested -- were not capable of carrying out an assassination.

"The law recognises a difference between a true threat -- one that can be carried out -- and the reported racist rantings of a drug addict," Mr Eid said. Their plan was "more aspirational, perhaps, than operational", he said.

Remember:

Thursday's nomination acceptance takes place on the anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech by Martin Luther King, and King's campaign for racial equality saw him assassinated 40 years ago

While many people do not place a huge significance on dates of important events there are fanatics who do.  Tim McVeigh and his ilk do place huge significance on the dates of certain events...like Ruby Ridge and Waco tragedies for their own ideological ends.

From the Anti-Defamanation League website about Aryan Nations:

Aryan Nations is one of the country's best-known enclaves of anti-Semitism and white nationalism. While founded as a Christian Identity outpost, the organization also incorporates neo-Nazi themes; its founder and longtime leader, Richard Girnt Butler, openly adulates Hitler.

I will point out this from the Souther Poverty Law Center's 2006 report on racism and racist activity in the military:

Department of Defense investigators estimate thousands of soldiers in the Army alone are involved in extremist or gang activity. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," said one investigator. "That's a problem."

Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the U.S. military.

McVeigh was a decorated combat veteran from Operation Desert Storm, and afterwards he was also a meth addict.  In interviews, Timothy McVeigh suggested that much of his inspirations stemmed from the racist thinking and the beliefs of the Aryan Nations group.  Meth appears to have been no impediment to carrying out a terrorist attack.

But the above referenced report had to appear in a foreign news source not here in America.  What does that say about our nation's press and the willingness of the American people who are blindered and being lead around by the nose?

Neo-Nazi organizations like Aryan Nations, Hammerskins, and their fellow travelers like Jim Gilchrist's Minutemen are easily agitated and cheered on by hate spewing shock jocks of radio.  Those organizations their delusional notions of white suppression constitute a clear and present danger in this election.

This first example was brought to my attention by Georgia10 writing at Dailykos.com:

So the Daily Kos blogging contingent was all set to stay at a certain hotel in Denver. At the last minute --literally, the night before many of us flew out to Denver--we got word that we would be switching hotels. It turned out to be a dump, so yeah, an upgrade was in order.

... Waking up to swat teams is a surefire clue that you're not staying at a five star hotel, that's for sure, and if there was ever a sign to change hotels, a meth bust outside your hotel door is sure to be it...

And today, we learn that the meth bust across the hall was just one part of a much larger and more disturbing story:

DENVER (CBS4) ―  CBS4 has now learned at least four people are under arrest in connection with a possible plot to kill Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges. [...]

GregMitch, Dailykos.com, digs deeper and writes:

Following up an earlier TV report, NBC in Denver is now reporting, "Sources tell NBC the two men had tattoos and jewelry popular with white supremacists."  It also notes that an unidentified source tells NBC,  "There is no reason for someone [with a criminal record] to have rifles with scopes."

My Web research has found a home address for one of the men, Tharin Gartrell, in Lakewood, Co....

Rory O'Connor, Alternet.org, writes about the continuing efforts by the hate jocks of radio to foment violence this year: 

Rodriguez says she "would usually shrug this off as idiotic, but it has actually gained traction. This right-wing jerk, whose show is a constant stream of anti-immigrant, racist, and homophobic rhetoric, is leading the charge, even commenting the other day that we need 'bloodshed in the polling places.'

Dave Neiwert, Orcinus blog, has written an in depth investigation into eliminationist rhetoric:

This is the naked bigotry revealed by both Klein's and Borat's stunts, and it has a particular quality to it -- a theme running through it, as it were: eliminationism.

White frat boys who long to enslave blacks, Texas ranchers who think hunting and shooting a Jew sounds like fun, and radio audiences who want to tattoo Muslims and lock them up in concentration camps -- they all reflect the strands of the hard-wired right-wing desire to eliminate, by violent means if necessary, anyone deemed the Other, or the Enemy.

What does this mean except that there is homegrown violent organizations from the right have taken hold and have been vigorously supported by the so called shock jocks from the big boys like Micheal Savage to the pip squeaks like Arizona's "Jon Justice" which will lead to murder and assassination attempts against all who are their enemies.

We can counter but a major part is to remove their broadcast cheerleaders.  Those cheerleaders for hatred and eliminationist violence should be able to speak but only on their soapbox at a street corner.  The public airwaves should not be a cesspool that will cheerlead on people who are mentally unstable, paranoid, and delusional enough to carry out murder against ethnic and racial groups.

I posted a few pics that I took on Sunday at my blog on Open.salon.com

It is with Progressive Democrats of America, The Big Tent, and Amnesty International.

Enjoy!

What about "Smokin'" Joe Biden?   I hope he will be the attack dog for Obama because Obama is not gettin the job done on Mc$ame.

Warming up by kos Sun Aug 24, 2008 at 06:22:56 PM PDT

(Bumped -- kos)

The more I read stuff like this (from Stephanopolous on Good Morning America Weekend Sunday), the more comfortable I am with Biden's selection.

I have never seen a vice-presidential candidate, in the announcement, come out with THAT KIND of ferocity. Usually, you see it a little bit later in the campaign – not at the announcement. But Joe Biden showed one of the main reasons that Barack Obama picked him. They WANTED a scrapper out there. They WANT a fighter out there. They know Senator Biden will be able to get UNDER Senator McCain’s skin. They’ve known each other for an AWFUL long time – more than 35 years.

Digby writes:

Biden doesn't make me feel that way. He's a Washington insider, with all that that implies, but at least he hasn't spent his career making the social conservatives' case for them...

if Biden can speak the language of the working class Dems (even if his record speaks to the typical beltway fealty to big business) then he is an asset. 

However if you want a different perspective on Senator Biden I suggest that you look at what Glenn Greenwald states:

The most entrenched establishment spokespeople are cheering the selection of Joe Biden because, in their minds, that selection confirms the most important fact for them: that in this election, the prevailing orthodoxies of our political system won't be meaningfully challenged. Chief Establishment Defender Fred Hiatt cheerfully announced today, also on the Editorial page of The Washington Post, that the Ways of Washington have been vindicated:

Mr. Biden may share Mr. Obama's outlook, but with an idealism tempered by years in the trenches. Which points to Mr. Biden's second advantage: experience. Mr. Obama's willingness to reach out to the kind of seasoned insider that he has, at times, derided suggests a heartening recognition that time in Washington can be useful.

David Brooks wrote earlier in the week that he hoped Obama chose Biden because it would advance what Brooks conceives of as "the good of the country." The political establishment's overriding preoccupation is that nothing meaningful should change how the political system works, that both parties should continue to embrace the central orthodoxies.

Well there you have it!  The change is...facile or do we make the case for real change by demanding it!

Why not this "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" to be used against Mc$ame?

Would it not behoove Obama's campaign to get Robin "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" Leach to be in a national ad?

Also, I would not just use the word "wealthy" to Mrs. Mc$ame but this "super wealthy".  Who can afford to spend $250,000 per year for house servants.  

Pound those points all the time:  super wealthy, house servants, and lots of photos of Mc$ame's houses and condos.

Anybody in the progressnowaction community up for a video challenge?  Who can make a video of 30 seconds in length about Mc$ame's super wealthy wife, $250,000 year budget for house servants, and Robin Leach's famous tag line "champagne wishes and caviar dreams"? 

Now is the time for change but change demands that Obama be strong and stand for the principals that form the bedrock of change that this nation's people desire.  Sure there are many who are against change and the uncertainty that change means to the "old ways".  However, change was never brought about by being meek and merely begging and changing your principals.  The easy way is not the way for a paradigm shift.  The easy way is the way for people to become discouraged about the catalyst of change.

Theda Skocpal, from Talkingpointsmemo.com's Cafe, writes:

The last month has been excruciating for Obama supporters, watching him and his campaign squander so many hopes and resources on an utterly wimpy campaign. For me, the last straw was yesterday -- in the VFW speech when supposedly Obama was gettting tough against McCain's character assassination strategy -- to watch him speak like a soporific college professor, repeating McCain's charges at length, flattering McCain as honorable and patriotic, and then, finally, sort of begging McCain to take it back! Josh Marshall is totally right to call Obama out on this.

What are they thinking in Chicago? Why would they ever imagine that Americans will vote to make President a candidate who evades and begs...

Politics is not just about issues, it is a metaphorical test of strength. If a man will not get immediately -- if quietly -- angry and fight back when his patriotism is attacked, why should we trust him to defend the country? And if he won't punch back by explaining clearly why his approach to foreign policy is actually tougher and smarter, why McCain's is thoughtless and reckless, why would we think he is better to be Commander in Chief?

And on issues like oil drilling, why not recognize that McCain has adopted an ACTIVE metaphor that makes emotional sense to people? He is saying we should act to tap U.S. resources, and people are not really concerned about how many years it would take to tweak pump prices. They hear action and will and resolve -- and these are highly valued in a President! Obama can certainly get a hearing for other active steps, but he and the Dems should stop pretending that they can parry drilling with logic.

This is the reason(s) why there is a seeming lack of enthusiasm and frustration with Obama and the lack of forcefulness in representing true change that America needs from the current direction of endangering America through imperialist hubris and reckless endangerment of the human species through actively trying to increase pollutants to reach the worst case scenario of global warming.

There is time to right the ship but  the window is rapidly closing as to how Obama is defined in the public's mind.

From John Aravosis, Americablog.com, writes:

Joe and I know a lot of people in politics. A lot of them are very smart. They're not the people you hate, the Cokie Roberts' and the Mrs. Greenspan's of the world. They're the kind of people you like and you trust. And those people are now telling us that they fear we're going to lose the election...

There is an incredible discontent out there with the way this campaign is being run. The fact that the discontent isn't being recognized, isn't being assuaged, is disturbing. People aren't worried about the election, they're becoming despondent about it. They're not motivated to work twice as hard, they instead feel as if they've had the wind knocked out of them. This is far beyond a healthy skepticism as to whether Obama can win.

From Josh Marshall, Talkingpointsmemo.com, writes "The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable."

Again, I say it is time for us, we are the agents of change and will continue to be so long after this election, to take charge and lead Obama.  Obama may be the catalyst but we have an obligation to see through this generational change for a better America. 

This is essential reading on the myth of "We are all Georgians" by Bush/Cheney and Mc$ame on Dailykos.com by Billmon as he writes about the past, which I wasn't aware of:

In early October 1994, as Congress hurried to adjourn for the mid-term elections, something called the "NATO Participation Act" was introduced – in the House by Democrat Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut and Ben Gilman of New York; in the Senate by Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Hank Brown of Colorado (a liberal Democrat, a moderate Republican and two conservative Republicans. In the warped context of our political duopoly, you can’t get much more bipartisan that that.) The measure was quickly attached to a bill authorizing international aid for the war on drugs, unanimously passed by both houses on voice votes, and quickly signed into law by President Clinton. There was no floor debate and, as far as I can tell, virtually no press coverage.

This completely non-controversial (and indeed, barely noticed) law authorized the US government to immediately begin treating "countries emerging from communist domination" – and, in particular, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – as de facto allies, even though no formal decision had been made on their applications to the NATO club. This meant the Pentagon could provide them with "surplus" stores and equipment, help upgrade their old Soviet-era military bases, and finance weapons sales under the same lenient terms extended to other US allies. It also authorized the stationing of US "trainers" (read: military advisors) on their home soil. The only thread left hanging was how the US would respond in the unlikely eventuality that our new unofficial allies were attacked.

This is what Mc$ame said, on CBSnews.com, August 12:

McCain told more than 2,000 voters in York that he spoke Tuesday morning with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to make sure he knows "that the thoughts, prayers and support of the American people are with that great little nation as it struggles today" for independence.

"I told him that I know I speak for every American when I said to him, today, we are all Georgians," McCain said to loud applause. He said Saakashvili asked him to express his thanks to Americans. 

But rather than give a critical eye to what Mc$ame was doing this is what Billmon wonders:

But I have to admit, even I was startled when the semi-official media (Washington Post, NY Times, AP, etc.) began referring to Georgia as a staunch US "ally".

Are we going backwards in time to the knowable of...wanting a new "Cold" war in which there is a "proven" enemy to win money for the military-industrial complex?

Since Mc$ame wants it because he is old and that is what is familiar to his generation.

But as we step into a new world for the next generation is that what will be bequeathed to us by the remnants of the old guard? 

It is time to kick John McCain's *ss because the negative campaign ads are defining Obama.  Contrary to what experts say about the effectiveness of Obama's ads, those ads are not doing the job. 

I could not agree more with Big Tent Democrat's view at Talkleft.com:

[McCain spokeperson] Nicolle Wallace: ""The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous."

Sure it's stupid, but stupid works when you don't push back.

It may be that Obama is talking at a "higher" plane and really wants to put campaigning at a different and more civilized level, but with Mc$ame's campaign being run by Karl's proteges there is a time and place for nice and for bringing out "a gun to a knife fight".

If Obama doesn't like 527s he should understand that 527s will do the "dirty work" if his campaign isn't going to.  This doesn't mean taking the low road which Mc$ame has done but simply to fire back with real numbers rather than, for example, Obama's ad countering with Mc$ame's economic policies.   What should have been done is to state boldly the exact profit numbers of Exxon/Mobil for one quarter then one year with a comparison of gas prices and oil prices.  Finally hitting Mc$ame with giving oil companies even more tax breaks.  One point to make and then repeat it.

Same thing with the Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans, the occupation of Iraq, and VA benefits-  hit Mc$ame with his support for the occupation and his denial of support for our veterans and the VA.  One point to make and then repeat it.

I find that the ads for Obama are too soft and simply not hitting on the visceral level.

Look at Mc$ame's ad strategy:  Leadership vs. "being a" Celebrity.  This strategy is the underpinning for all of his ads.  It is a consistent theme on what ever subject the ad is about. 

I see that it is lacking in Obama campaign's ad team strategy.  

Finally,  let the Obama campaign take the high road, but in politics, let our team fight with all the irons too. 

Either we are suckers or Sen. Bayh is an idiot.

From Talkingpointsmemo.com (originally from WSJ.com):

"I don't remember any meetings, any conversations, any anything," Sen. Bayh said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "Obviously my name was linked to it, but other than that there's nothing that can be said."

Greg Sargent writes:

Senator Evan Bayh's co-chairing of the neocon Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, along with John McCain and Joe Lieberman, and why that makes him a bad Veep choice for Obama...

This is deeply absurd, to put it very charitably.

Join the Facebook.com group opposed to Evan Bayh being the choice by Obama. 

This is what McCain is jonesing about:

The US is to send troops to embattled Georgia in the form of a humanitarian aid exercise, President George Bush announced today.

Mr Bush said military planes would deliver supplies in a move which would put American forces in the heart of the region.

This has nothing to about "humanitarian aid" but everything about oil.   If it is not an attack on Iran then it will be a "trip wire" in Georgia.

The result is the same: WAR. 

Looking for an outlet to report on the National Conventions? 

I caught this off the Reuters website:

Reuters is looking for participants in a new mobile journalism project that will capture this year’s conventions from the ground up. We will be equipping attendees with video cameras, and helping them to shoot footage from their own perspective and upload it to Reuters.com and other sites...

Even if you’re not going to Denver or St. Paul, what kind of coverage would you like to see? What questions would you like on-the-scene reporters to ask? Leave your suggestions in the comments section.