1 out of every 1,000 Americans(!) were in NYC this weekend telling W to shove it. Rock on, gang.

In some areas, protesters stood shoulder to shoulder. They stretched from 34th Street and Seventh Avenue down to Canal Street.

One marcher said it took more than two hours to walk the route, more than two miles.

I’m a bit surprised Adam hasn’t posted this one already, but I’ll cut him some slack for being out of the country: boy, folks, when you’ve got Garrison Keillor mad, good ol’ mild-and-pleasant ol’ Garrison Keillor, you know you’ve screwed up.

We’re not in Lake Wobegon anymore.

Salon gets the early scoop.

Al Franken and Air America encourage us all to tell W to fuggedaboudit.

(Boston-era Brayers, I’m tempted to gather us all in one location that night and do this.)

Maybe that pacemaker is working; Cheney finds his heart:

Asked his position… Cheney replied: “Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue that our family is very familiar with. … With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be able to free — ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.”

Cheney went on to repeat the position he first outlined in the 2000 campaign — that same-sex marriage should be left to the states to decide. He noted, however, that Bush has endorsed a constitutional amendment preventing the states from recognizing such marriages.

“At this point … my own preference is as I’ve stated,” Cheney said. “But the president makes basic policy for the administration. And he’s made it. ”

The remarks were the farthest Cheney has gone in laying out his differences with Bush’s position, and they took leaders of the GOP conservative base by surprise.

While I only touched briefly upon it at the end of my review, the movie “Outfoxed” does do a bit on how misleading corporate media is in general. The rest of media has to be constantly monitored for falsehoods too.

Let’s take a look at today’s newspapers for instance. As I picked up my free copy of the Metro today, it looked like Bush has finally denounced the Swift Boat Veteran’s attack ads on Kerry. The Metro wasn’t alone its headline. Unfortunately, that headline is essentially untrue, but I didn’t know that until I did more research into it. As Slate reports:

The LAT doesn’t headline Bush’s declining to denounce the Vietnam ads. Instead it emphasizes his call for an end to all independently funded ads. The NYT has similar play in its off-lead as does the Wall Street Journal up high in its world-wide newsbox. Which is weird, because Bush did not break new ground. Again, he essentially reiterated what White House spokespeople have been saying for weeks. By going Page One with Bush’s comments anyway, aren’t the papers helping to mislead readers? Only the Post doesn’t play along: “KERRY TEAM LINES UP VIETNAM WITNESSES; Bush Again Declines to Condemn Attack Ad.”

The LAT editors—and most journos—might want to flip to the back of their paper. “The technique President Bush is using against John F. Kerry was perfected by his father against Michael Dukakis in 1988,” says an editorial. “Bring a charge, however bogus. Make the charge simple. But make sure the supporting details are complicated and blurry enough to prevent easy refutation. Then sit back and let the media do your work for you. Journalists have to report the charges, usually feel obliged to report the rebuttal, and often even attempt an analysis or assessment. But the canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false. As a result, the voters are left with a general sense that there is some controversy over Kerry’s service in Vietnam. And they have been distracted from thinking about real issues (like the war going on now).

Thank goodness for Slate and the other media that are true to the ideals of journalism. A pity that they are few and far between.

That’s right, a movie review on a political blog. Even more shocking is that this is NOT a review that of that political film that everyone, whether they be Democrat or Republican, is still talking about even though it was released awhile ago. I know Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle is an important treatise on race relations within this country, but geez people, let’s make like the website and moveon. Instead, this is a review of a lesser-known documentary released straight-to-video called Outfoxed.

“Outfoxed” is a careful dissection of that bastion of conservative commentary, Fox News. Unlike its subject, it makes no claims about being “fair and balanced.” It’s an opinion piece and is thus biased like an opinion piece. But that doesn’t detract from the film any since its implied opinion (i.e. Fox News is dangerous to our democracy) is carefully backed up with evidence leading you inexorably to that conclusion. It shows, for instance, polls that demonstrate people who watch Fox News have a very different objective view of the world than those who listen to PBS/NPR.
(more…)

So asks a panel of Texan religion experts.

This is one of those news stories that blogs pick up, but most major news outlets ignore entirely.

While everyone else seems to be concentrating on just how heroic Kerry was in the late 60′s, some people have taken a closer look at Dubya’s record from that time period. Granted the stakes are lower since this is in the middle of a game instead of a war, but I think it provides insight in Bush’s character.

Of course Lore, of Brunching fame has his own incriminating photographs.

Those of us who remember the Schoolhouse Rock classic “Elbow Room” will enjoy EriqX’s hilarious “Shock and Awe”. Warning: lyrics NSFW.

(annoyingly requires Quicktime 5 or something that can play mp4 videos.)

John Kerry is not the only one being unfairly attacked by other veterans for his military service. Salon details this account of a loyal soldier having his record spun by revisionists and slander.

John Perry Barlow – Libertarian, rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder, and Middletown Alpha Delt – explains his newfound support for the Democratic party:

I’ve been a Republican county chairman. I was one of Dick Cheney’s campaign managers when he first ran for Congress. But… we’ve got two distinct strains of libertarianism, and the hippie-mystic strain is not engaging in politics, and the Ayn Rand strain is basically dismantling government in a way that is giving complete open field running to multinational corporatism…

I have grave misgivings about John Kerry, but I certainly don’t have misgivings about Kerry that equal the terror I have about another four years of Bush. What he’s done to aspects of the Constitution that are there to assure individual rights is breathtakingly bad.

So I’m becoming an active Democrat. I wasn’t one until just a few months ago, because I felt there was more room for libertarian thought inside the Republican Party… There are libertarian wings in both the Democratic and Republican parties, and in the past I found it most effective to be inside the Republican Party acting as a libertarian. But I’ve switched.

Reason: Would this situation be any different if John Kerry were president?

Barlow: It would certainly be better. I don’t think anyone is as good as he ought to be… But I think Kerry will be somewhat better than Bush, if for no other reason than he is not on the same side in the culture war. Kerry’s a Deadhead. He inhaled…

Kerry isn’t perfect, but the alternative is just completely….I hate to keep carping on this, but within the libertarian movement we’re gonna have to actually sit down and talk about where we stand on the two variants, because one of them is actually part of the problem at this point. I used to think of myself as both kinds of libertarian, but I have pretty well parted company with [D.C.-based leader of libertarian-leaning conservatives] Grover Norquist at this point. I don’t see anything particularly free about a plutocracy.

The producer of Outfoxed has taken a clip from Tim Russert, featuring Bill O’Reilly yelling at Paul Klugman, and interspersed it with, you know, actual facts. A good watch.

In response to Bush/Cheney requiring a loyalty oath to attend their rallies (God, how I wish that were a joke), Boston rockers Jim’s Big Ego are now requiring the same.

In an attempt to run their band in a more American and patriotic fashion, Jim’s Big Ego will be requiring anyone who seeks entrance to their shows to sign a lifetime oath of loyalty to the band. A notary public will be on hand at the entrance to all of their clubs with a retinal scanner, fingerprint kit and a contract to sign. Attendees should bring a current passport, drivers license, birth certificate and if they are a home owner, the deed to their house.

“We were inspired by the Bush Cheney tour,” says Jason Schneider, JBE manager & minister of information, “we had to sign a loyalty oath to go see our hero Dick Cheney speak, and we were so impressed by how ingenious it was to insure our support ahead of time, we thought – ‘why don’t we do that’? Why should JBE have to wonder whether they will get wild applause or a standing ovation? I mean, we work hard to put together a show. We don’t need to hear your outburst if it’s not 100% on-message.”

Want to see how W’s campaign promises from 2000 compare to now? This handy guide takes quotes from his 2000 website and contrasts them with his actions.

The irony is so steep you could drown in it. This guy’s gotten through all sorts of colleges on his family connections: Yale, Harvard, the Electoral…

From USA Today:

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we,” Bush said. “They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

Is it too much to ask for the leader of the free world to have a working synapse between brain and mouth?

Tom the Dancing Bug gives us a history lesson via this cartoon at Salon.

” ‘That’s not why we’re doing it. Voters are smarter than that,’ has become my personal code for ‘Of course that’s why we’re doing it, but if you want to call us on it, we’ll make you pay the price of publicly implying voters are stupid.’ ”

  – Nina Kelsey

Ron Reagan Jr. writes “The Case Against George W. Bush.”

Wow. This is well worth reading in its entirety.

Politicians will stretch the truth. They’ll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken “normal” mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on.

None of this, needless to say, guarantees Bush a one-term presidency. The far-right wing of the country—nearly one third of us by some estimates—continues to regard all who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid (liberals, rationalists, Europeans, et cetera) as agents of Satan. Bush could show up on video canoodling with Paris Hilton and still bank their vote. Right-wing talking heads continue painting anyone who fails to genuflect deeply enough as a “hater,” and therefore a nut job, probably a crypto-Islamist car bomber. But these protestations have taken on a hysterical, almost comically desperate tone. It’s one thing to get trashed by Michael Moore. But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos.

Does anyone really favor an administration that so shamelessly lies? One that so tenaciously clings to secrecy, not to protect the American people, but to protect itself? That so willfully misrepresents its true aims and so knowingly misleads the people from whom it derives its power? I simply cannot think so. And to come to the same conclusion does not make you guilty of swallowing some liberal critique of the Bush presidency, because that’s not what this is. This is the critique of a person who thinks that lying at the top levels of his government is abhorrent. Call it the honest guy’s critique of George W. Bush.