I struck a nerve this morning (finally) with a swing voter in my office who watches a lot of FOX and has an entire family of wingnuts. We were talking about taxes. He was saying he doesn't want his taxes to go up and fears that a vote for Kerry is a vote for higher taxes. I started explaining to him that Bush has actually raised taxes on most Americans indirectly by starving state and local governments.  Then I listed all the ways his taxes have gone up indirectly during the Bush administration. Here were some of the points I made:

This is an email I just composed to David Brock, founder of Mediamatters.org.

I was reading an article today in Salon on David Bossie, the republican political operative.

I was outraged by the fact that the NY Times still portrays him as a credible source to unsuspecting readers after his involvement in the lies and fabrication of Whitewater. Then when I returned to my office today I was handed a printout of an email by a co-worker that depicted all of Theresa Heinz-Kerry's charitable contributions to organizations that support terror and anti-American causes - the source was WorldnetDaily.

I was thinking to myself that since mendacity has become such a cottage industry of right wing what we really need is a "Credibility Index" - a page that lists the top 100 most egregious fabricators of truth in journalism.

A better question is: When is a deliberate bombing not an act of terrorism?

Last night around 8:30pm I was waiting for the 1 train at the 34th street station when the intercom said that all trains were bypassing 42nd street due to an "prior incident". No biggie, happens all the time. I decide to walk it to the Times Square shuttle. As I approached I noticed an inordinate amount of people packing the street corners. I was exhausted, wanted to get home and these false alarms happen so much in NYC these days I thought nothing of it. I had my headphones on pretty loud so I couldn't hear what anyone was saying but I do remember a certain amount of fear in their faces - but then I said to myself ahhh they're just a bunch of tourists making something out of nothing in the hopes they can tell their friend at home about their brush with death - I continued to push my grisled NY attitude through the crowd.

Clicking through the news tonight I see this headline:

NYPD Confirms Subway Explosive Was Crude Bomb

Some of the best message boards I check out have this one excellent quality - they dedicate an open thread (that constantly stays in view) to alerting the community to timely tv and radio appearances, news articles, books and movies that are relevant to the topics discussed. This would be a great remedy to cutting down the amount of diaries that are created only to alert the community to a specific article or tv appearance that the community will find relevant. Someone is always posting a diary asking people what they are reading or what are the best political movies they've seen and I've found some great stuff from them. There are many times I read or see something that I think many in the community would enjoy but I don't think it deserves it's own diary and the open thread is 6 posts down with 300 comments. It would be nice to have it all in one place and constantly updating so someone can just post - "Howard Dean on Air America now!" or "Frontline has a special on Iraq airing next Tuesday" or "I just finished 'Imperial Hubris' an I fully recommend it. (I do)" It will give us one place to check out before with go rent a movie, the bookstore, or turn on a tv. It will also give those of us with Tivo the ability to know in advance of a tv appearance we otherwise would have missed because we missed the diary alerting us to it. This can be done simply enough. Kos can create an open thread called "Media Alerts" and link to it in the menu section. What do you think?

Here's a perfect example: NPR in NYC 93.9 is doing a segment on bloggers as we speak! 10:43am EST

I just found a great new tool that will make every Kossack a potential on the spot reporter. It's called Audioblogger and it's available free for Blogger users. I know audioblogging is nothing new but Blogger has really made this as simple as can be. All you need to do is call a phone number put in you passcode speak your message and once you hang up it will immediately appear in mp3 form on your blog.  I think it has some real potential to get us news in real time that will most certainly not be covered by the mainstream media. We should definitely try it out for the convention in Boston but I think the real potential won't be realized until the Republican convention in NYC where real potential for illegal arrests and detention most certainly will exist.

I've been on a documentary kick lately on Netflix and have been looking for some new interesting political docs to add to my queue any suggestions?

Here are the ones I recommend that are available through Netflix:

Unprecedented
Uncovered
The Fog of War
Manufacturing Consent
The Weather Underground
Trials of Henry Kissinger
Dark Days
Koyaanisqatsi
Naqoyqatsi
Children Underground

There is an important documentary on PBS tomorrow night 10pm EST. It's call Thirst and it's about the corporate takeover of water supplies in the third world and here in America. If anyone was sickened by the Bechtel/Bolivia debacle a couple of years ago, I'm pretty sure they will focus on that as well. A billion people on this earth do not have safe drinking water at their disposal, if we let corporate interests turn drinking water into a for-profit enterprise can air be that far behind?

Imagine the conflict of interests involved as a corporation which owns two subsidiaries: One creates toxic chemical waste that pollutes rivers and contaminates the ground water, the other is in charge of the municipal water supply. What would be their incentive to not pollute? Seems like it would be counterintuitive for profits since the more ground water that is poisoned the more citizens would have to rely on the water that they provide.

If so, why are the issues raised on Friday night never debated here on Saturday morning?

Brancaccio had an absolutely maddening interview with that Frank Luntz the republican pollster. This is the guy that crafted the meme "all republicans should mention 9/11 before they mention the word Iraq" when trying to justify the war. He actually defended the practice as legitemate. Brancaccio - who usually does a pretty good job - dropped the ball on this one big time. At one point Luntz was talking about the good and bad use of these techniques. Good: "Mr. Gorbechev tear down this wall" (totally not a duplicitious use of the language and Reagan's most shining moment) and "it depends of what the definition of 'is' is" (probably Bill Clinton's most duplicitious statement and worst moment as president). Not only does Brancaccio not point this out but he should have mentioned the phrase "I never used the term 'imminent threat'.

I want to discuss this interview with someone. Are there any linguists out there? This guy is singlehandedly responsible for the Orwellian tactics that make up the heart of this scumbag republican strategy of - create a perception to hide reality.

I'm in the midst of an argument and am being challenged to show proof of Americans being denied their civil rights as a direct result of Bush's policies. I know about Jose Padilla, Patriot Act, the library book and phone tapping,  but I need more everyday examples. I remember reading numerous articles of middle eastern men having their 4th, 5th and 6th amendments encroached upon or illegally detained because they have donated to charities that had a specious link to terrorist organizations or they had a name that sounded like Bin Laden. Please give me links to any and all articles that prove that Bush has a total disregard of the Bill of Rights.

Sorry for the one line diary. But check it out.

Yes, I couldn't believe it either. Finally there is proof that Moore is a bald-faced liar. After seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday I did a little online research about the number of soldiers Michael Moore claims were injured while serving in Iraq. The number 5000 flashed on the screen. That number is misleading. This is something Moore does in all of his movies and it's time we as the viewing public started taking a stand. He took his numbers from a source that has been thouroughly discredited numerous times in just the past year alone: The United States Federal Government.

It turns out that the U.S. Armed Services only count as "injured" those soldiers who sustain their injuries in "active" combat. Those numbers don't account for accidents, disease, dehydration or suicides.  NOW with Bill Moyers last week reported that if you take into account the non-combat sick and injured the count can be as high as 10,000 - 15,000.  Geez Michael, the Federal Government? FOX News is more reputable at this point...

Someone needs to get the first piece digitized. Stewart absolutely mauls Cheney documenting lie and lie after lie. Right now he is skewering Stephan Hayes on his pathetic book detailing the connection between Bin Laden and Hussein. At one point Stewart says that Iran used WMD's as well in the Iran/Iraq war and Hayes says "that's one theory I don't think it's been shown" and Stewart almost jumps out of his desk pointing to the book saying. "you're no one to talk about what's been shown!"

It's a scary world when the most courageous Americanjournalist is John Stewart...

I've been in a back and forth argument with a right wing co-worker of mine for some time. Today he sends me a link to an article of Giuliani praising the Bush administration. Normally I would just email him back something along the lines of: "So is this what you do with your time now that our company has installed porn blocker software?"  But my newly implanted Google brainchip quickly remembered for me that back in March Roger Ailes  posted a story on his blog about Giuliani winning some pretty lucrative contracts from the DOJ and Tim Russert failing to mention that during Giuliani's 20 minute paean to all things Bush on MTP.

Ok, so Scoop has it's limitations. Our first attempt to rank diaries was admirably undertaken by Delaware Dem but time constraints and a fondness for too many diaries forced him to discontinue.

Now I hate to miss any news and sometimes I stumble upon great diaries by accident and wonder what other great work am I missing? So here is the newest solution:

A sister blog called Kos Diaries

Why don't we experiment with this for a couple of days and see how it works out. I'm leaving it open for anyone to post so we don't put undo stress on any one person. Anyone who reads a diary that they deem worthy can post a link to it.  

 Just go to Blogger
and type in:

username: Kossack
password: 111111

[Once you've signed in bookmark the link.]

click "create new post"

Add the link and it's probably best to add the first paragraph as well.

That's it, your done and you've kept a great diary from fading into obscurity!

Q&A

Q: What's going to keep someone from posting their own diary?

A: Nothing I guess, we'll have to go on the honor system for now. If that becomes a problem we can move to either limiting the number of posters or some type of nomination system within the thread whereby one poster nominates the diary for "best of" and we can agree to a threshold number of "excellent" ratings in order to be submitted. But for now let's just keep it open so we can get it off the ground.

Disclaimer:

 I'm no techie and am unaware of the limitations of blogger. I have no idea if it will allow more than one person to sign in to the same username at once so please refrain from criticism if this doesn't work out at first. It's just an experiment. With all the great minds here I'm sure we can figure it out.

I'll be the administrator for now but I'd gladly give up the reigns to someone who has more tech skills (I can't even figure out how to put a blogroll on my own site!). So if anyone is up for it, it's yours.

Hope it's not all funny

Walmart was voted down in Inglewood California. Let's not take our eye off the ball. Walmart tried to take over the commerce of an entire town yesterday making it the only game in town so they can set the wages.  If that's not bad enough they have the hubris to ask to circumvent environmental restrictions and public hearings.

Let's remember what this war in Iraq is really about or at least started as. Keeping America distracted on one front while corporations  take more and more control of our lives.

Wal-Mart officials promised the company would conform to all city codes.

Yet they still wanted no public oversight. Kinda reminds you of Bush going to Congress for the right to invade any sovereign nation he deems a threat with the promise he would consult Congress if he decides to do so...

We need to come up with an alternative for poor communities like Inglewood or else the Walmarts of the world will eventually step in and place them into indentured servitude for the rest of their lives.

We need some type of cookie cutter government program that allows the barrier of entry to starting a business the same as starting a blog on blogger. All the basic tools need to be provided until people can get up to speed and fly on their own.

I bet it would cause less than 87 billion dollars to do...They why haven't we done it? Take a look at Bush's war chest. Remember who the real enemy is people. It's not the people from Iraq or Saudi Arabia. It's the corporations that fan the flames of hatred so they can profit and keep us in chains.

put on PBS they are parsing the day of 9/11. Bush sits there doing nothing!

When asked why the President needed to vet the 9/11 commissions final document by Russert Karen Hughes said that they need to "make sure there's no information that can risk the life of an intelligence officer." I unfortunately was watching that with a mouth full of orange juice...I guess that means that Karl Rove won't be part of the editing committee.

I was smart enough to put my drink down before this - when asked why Bush and Cheney were testifying together at the 9/11 commission she said it was effective use of their [busy] time - of course Mr. Followup never asked her about the record number of fundraisers the president has attended this year - don't wanna get spanked by Unka Karl...

At the end of the interview with Chairman Commission Kean when asked about Bush holding the report until after the election he and Hamilton just had this uneasy laugh like there's no way in hell it's coming back before the election. Boy do I miss a time when people didn't laugh so much when speaking about tragedy. It's all just a game to these people. That's what I hate most about Russert - he could care less about how the report will affect our national security - just how it will affect the election.