As I watched Lanny Davis lying through his teeth on Larry King last night, I had a strange feeling of deja vous. Today I realized that George Stephanopoulos had triggered the same feeling in me the other day when he was floating the idea that Hillary would consent to being Veep. And now I know why.  I was a member of a religious cult for a couple of years in the early 70s when I was in college, and Lanny and George remind me of weak cult types, like many I knew back then, like myself. Thus the deja vous.  

In my cult back in the 70s, there were plenty of Lannys and Georges. Larry G was a Lanny. He was never one of the golden insiders, but was a loyal worker bee, always striving for acceptance and praise form the great leader. His greatest thrill was to be ordered by AK to sweep up her poodle's crap or run errands for her. It was the same with Garry N and John F, Bill, W and many others.  When you look back, most of the members shared this uneasy status, never knowing when they were going to get a cookie or get their head chewed off. A very few had the golden insider status. And it was most instructive to us all when two of the golden insiders were knocked from their pedestals and humiliated worse than any of us. Anyone who's been involved with or studied cults will be familiar with these tropes.

Former populist candidate Howard Dean is going to make sure no other populist candidate challenges the Democratic party machine. Stating a floor fight at the convention would be bad for the party, Dean says if Obama and Clinton are tied going into March, he's force them to make a deal in some smoke-free back room. I can't imagine he would have said this if he was neck and neck with a machine politician like HRC in his own bid for the Presidency.

http://rawstory.com/...

As reported in Raw Story, Dean sez

"The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario," Dean said according to excerpts of an interview with NY1 television.

"I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don't, then we're going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement," said Dean, who failed in his bid for the party's nomination in 2004.

Thousands of absentee voters registered as Independents are in for a shock when they open their ballot envelopes for the upcoming Primary Election and discover there are no presidential candidates’ names on their ballot.  If you've already opened your envelope and discovered this, then you're probably one of over 10,000 California voters who have already called their county Registrar of Voters to find out how to fix the problem.  You learned that the Registrar would mail you a partisan (e.g., Democratic, Green, or American Independent) ballot, which you could then fill in and mail back.  (Republicans have excluded Independents in this election.)

In a story appearing in the msm, a flying saucer hovered over O'Hare Airport, Chicago on November 7, 2006.  Witnessed by dozens of employees, the frisbee shaped craft appeared on election day and disappeared just as quickly, rocketing off into a cloud bank having accomplished it's mysterious mission.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

The sighting has all the classic earmarks: Earnest witnesses, government account of a weather phemonena, even a witness experiencing a 'religious crisis'. But it is the date of the sighting which is provocative and entirely too coincidental to be ignored.

In congratulating and 'reaching out' to the Democratic incoming Congress, Bush also set the agenda for the outgoing Congress.  "It is our responsibility," Bush told reporters, "to put the elections behind us and work together on the great issues facing America." It seems he'd also like to put behind us some of his own legal exposure for criminal behavior he's engaged in since 2001. He wants them to pass among other things, the Terrorist Survaillance Act of 2006 before they turn the Congress over to the Democrats.

http://civilliberty.about.com/...

Why? Let me count the ways.

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I saw Barney Frank on Bill Maher this week and while it's no surprise he destroyed the token conservative, I took particular note of how Barney spoke about the issue of Habeas Corpus. The conservative (I forgot his name and just remember his green tie - and he's not worth even Googling thanks) shocked me when Bill brought up the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - you know, the one that allows King George to pick up anyone off the street, imprison them forever and torture them to the point of organ failure if he deems them enemy combatants.

Green Tie laughed and said something like, oh come on. This is Jack Bauer justice! Who wouldn't want that? You know, Jack grabs a terrorist, shoots him in the leg and says okay, where's the bomb?  The audience actually booed loudly which gave me hope for America.

The idea that Democrats are losers is conventional wisdom, but where does that idea come from? From the fact that the Democrats have lost every major election since Clinton of course.
But let's factor in some things we know or suspect about these election losses. In 2000 a close election was decided improperly by the Supreme Court. Since then, a Federal law which cynically was passed to fix the problem of election fraud, has mandated and funded the installation of unsecured, unverifiable electronic voting machines in most states. Many strongly suspect that these machines, owned by Republican backers, have been hacked to win elections for Republicans ever since.

Every day members of the Republican party seek to destroy America in the name of protecting it. But lately, they're finding themselves caught in a spotlight drawn by Bush's colosal stupidity, arrogance and incompetence. And when caught, they're dropping whatever it is they're raping, stealing or corrupting and running for it.

From Knight Ridder

For almost eight centuries the "great writ" of habeas corpus has been a bedrock principle of English and American law, from the Magna Carta to today's jails and courts. It's the means for a prisoner to contest his imprisonment before a judge. That's one reason legal experts were stunned when the Senate, after an hour of debate, voted Thursday to overturn the Supreme Court's extension of habeas corpus protection to 500-plus detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Opponents vowed Friday to fight the measure, and negotiators on the issue said the Senate may reconsider it early next week.

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According to Raw Story which has proven not too a shabby a source on Plamegate these days, and certainly an entertaining one, we get two names of possible Bush Supreme Court nominees:

One of Bush's two finalists may be Michael Luttig, appointed by Bush to the Fourth Circuit, ultra conservative former law clerk of Justice Burger considered a mini-Scalia.

http://www.dkosopedia.com/...

The other one is Samuel Alito, another ultra conservative, nominated by Bush to the Third Circuit, believed to have been edged out of O'Connor's seat by Harriet and interstingly also considered a Scalia clone. In fact he's so like Scalia, he's earned the nickname Scalito.

http://en.wikipedia.org/....

So there you have it. Bush may be pondering a choice between Mini-Scalia and Scalito, trying to decide which one is the most Scali-ishis.  

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President George Bush announced Saturday his intention to nominate Paul J. McNulty, of Virginia, to be Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice.

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2005/May/05_ag_293.htm

Interesting timing proposing the prosecutor heading the AIPAC spy case for the number 2 Justice job days before Fitz's indictments are likely be handed down. Is this an attempt to derail AIPACgate or Plamegate?  Wayne Madsen thinks it's actually quite the opposite; the leadup to an internal coup to protect the GOP by removing the neocons and replacing them with the old guard.

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The United States government went to look for the map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge so they could use it as the basis for their new legislation allowing drilling for oil in the pristine preserve and low and behold the map was gone! That's right. The U.S. Government has - or had - only one copy of this vital map establishing the borders of this recently created refuge. Damn! Gone? What a shame! No digitalized copy, no copy of any kind anywhere in the entire redundancy-mad bureaucracy. If you belive that, I've got a dog to sell you who eats nothing but homework.

No problem. Some guys in the GAO came to the rescue and drew up (from memory?) a new one. But wait a minute. Apparently the borders have been changed. The missing map did not seem to include in the coastal plain tens of thousands of acres of Native Alaskans' lands. On the new map, those lands were included, arguably making it easier to open them to energy development.

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No, not Iraq. New Orleans. The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06101601.htm

That's right. The lesson from Vietnam. Limit pictures, limit press. Keep those dead bodies off the nightly news or they'll drive Bush's numbers into single digits. These guys have brass balls, I'll give 'em that. Kill the free press just like they did it in Iraq.

When you read how Bush cut coastal funds for Louisiana in the recent Energy Bill, you have to wonder if making idiotic decisions that put a major American city underwater leaving a million plus people homeless and which damage critical oil-industry infrastructure for the country can't qualify under 'other high crimes and misdemeanors.'  

And that's without even including the equally idiotic Iraq military adventure intimately connected with the Louisiana disaster in it's wasteful use of vital National Guard man-power and equipment, a sleazy rumsfeld tactic to avoid having to institute a draft.

Read a sample of the paper trail of tears of Governor of Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Blanco's efforts to get Bush to ante up the money needed to avoid this disaster:

http://www.gov.state.la.us/New_Stories_detail.asp?id=50 read more below

The Republicans learned a great lesson in 2000: The only way to win elections and still pursue their unpopular programs and policies is to not to put too fine a point on it... steal elections. And in that spirit, Georgia, the testing ground for 2002 electronic election fraud, is bringing back Jim Crow.

Democrats need to understand, these problems are not going away but will increase exponentially. And as Republican- controlled legislatures increasingly give criminality the color of law, the cycle of counterfit election results leading to fake mandates and increasingly unpopular legislation and policies will increase.

With the example of Gore in 2000, the Repubs see the light. The more power you steal, the less chance you'll have to do the time for the crime. So the gloves are off in legislatures across the country. More power stolen to cover more crimes committed. Repubs today are truly power addicts without a twelve step program.

From the AP

ATLANTA - The state Senate's Democratic caucus, led by the chamber's black members, walked out of the Legislature Friday after an emotional vote on voting rights.

A quote form the Seattle Post Intelligencer today (and yes it's also a Drudge headline):

snip

COUNTING THE VOTES: Heinz Kerry is openly skeptical about results from November's election, particularly in sections of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes.

"Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as "hard-right" Republicans. She argued that it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."

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I voted today for Mayor and a few other assorted things in a primary here in L.A.  I didn't really want to bother but I overcame the resistance and headed down to the polling place which is a senior center within walking distance of our house.

I cannot tell you the FURY I felt walking into the polling place.

In the beginning of our nation, Congress thanked General Washington with the first Congressional Gold Medal for repelling the British:

Monday, 25 March 1776

Resolved, That the thanks of this Congress, in their own name, and in the name of the thirteen United Colonies, whom they represent, be presented to His Excellency General Washington, and the officers and soldiers under his command, for their wise and spirited conduct in the siege and acquisition of Boston; and that a medal of gold be struck in commemoration of this great event, and presented to His Excellency; and that a committee of three be appointed to prepare a letter of thanks and a proper device for the medal.

Journals of the Continental Congress v. 4 p. 234

Now our president has awarded the Medal to Tony Blair for his co-authoring the lie which gave cover to our two nations to wage war against a defenseless  third nation, to crush and occupy it and use it as an occasion to loot our treasury and murder that country's citizens and our own.

In May Dole defended Kerry's anti-war stance saying the medal controversy was irrelevent. Now he's fucking his old war buddy over and bismirching the 'Greatest Generation' with his latest his transparent republican shill job.

I remember Dole in Florida in 2000 getting out there and talking about dems disrespecting the troops in skirmishes over the mail-in military vote count. He's the untouchable icon they go to when they gotta pull a real ugly high stakes hatchet job. (the guy you trust who puts two behind your ear when the mob wants you gone. That's Dole)

Dole up there shilling for bush back then, made my skin crawl. Maybe it was the spectacle of one of Brokaw's 'greatest generation' soiling himself for the AWOL one. Back then dem rep. Jerry Nadler said he smelled a whiff of fascism iin the air. Now it's a skunk convention but surprise, ex-Viagra spokesman Bob Dole still can get his tail up with the worst of 'em.  

My point is not only is he dishonoring his generation, but he's a medal flip-flopper!

Ted Rall's fury (his title above) captures NYC's feelings about the upcoming Repub Convention. For those who didn't see this, I thought use a diary to link a piece that reminds this ex-New Yorker of the true emotional climate of his original home town:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0818-11.htm

All the media drumbeat has been focussed on the protesters. This piece points to the possible role of upset New Yorkers themselves.