Yo, Dubya, I think that Iranian kid's drinking your milkshake. From a beautiful photo essay by Arash Shiva, photos that the President would much rather you didn't see, on "Life in Iran" in Yes! Magazine.

And to Californians: Don't forget, it's hands free from now on...

Mood Indigo

I can't tell you how wonderful it was to spend an hour listening to her smoky, evocative voice trying to find the right video for tonight. Ultimately, I chose the one that my little one couldn't stay in her seat for, compelled to dance along.

And thanks to everyone who helped out Ernestine Anderson...the donations received worldwide enabled her to save her house.

Autoblog:

Automakers had until July 1st to plead their case to the NHTSA overlords before the government agency set off to finalize the 2011-2015 CAFE standards. After hearing comments from Detroit automakers, Toyota, Daimler, and others, it seems that the new standards are going to have a sweeping effect on both consumers and auto industry employees. The Auto Alliance states that the cuts would hasten the exit of 82,000 jobs, cost $29 billion for consumers, and raise the cost of your favorite truck by $4,000 or more. The added cost of vehicles will also cut annual production by up to 850k units industry-wide.

Buy that? Me neither. Especially since the Bush administration has hidden the benefits of emission regulations, saving the country $2 TRILLION.

Of course, we could go the automakers' way...keep producing an inefficient engine requiring a diminishing resource for fuel and allow other countries to continue to beat us in technology and sales.

Remind me again, why would anyone want to vote Republican?

It's quite a list.

Just this week, a group of Republican senators re-introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, which, as we know, would ban gay marriage.

This isn’t especially surprising. Republicans are looking at the political landscape, and they’re feeling awfully discouraged. The polls look bad, the base looks depressed, and fundraising looks iffy. Rallying the far-right troops with an anti-gay amendment to the Constitution — even though it has no chance at even getting so much as a hearing — might be helpful to the conservative movement.

But the funny part is looking over the list of the 10 original sponsors. Most of the names are predictable — Brownback and Inhofe, for example — but there are two others whose names stand out: Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho).

Yes, two of the principal sponsors of a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage include one far-right Republican who hired prostitutes and another far-right Republican who was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport men’s room.

As my friend Kyle put it, these two are “not exactly the poster boys of the family values crowd or particularly upstanding examples of the supposed sanctity of the ‘union of a man and a woman.”‘

Poor John McCain...he doesn't like it when people start pointing out that maybe...just maybe...his vaunted experience of being a Vietnam vet and POW doesn't exactly hold up as a prerequisite for holding the office of the President of the United States. And now he's accusing Jim Webb of coordinating with the Obama campaign too.

On MSNBC last night, Webb told McCain that he should "calm down" with the use of his military service in the campaign, adding that it was time to "get the politics out of the military."

Now the McCain campaign is responding to Webb, arguing that Webb's comments prove that Obama "can't control his surrogate operation." McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers sends us this:

If you didn't think this was a coordinated attack on John McCain's credentials before, it's clear now that it is. Barack Obama's surrogates are telling the McCain campaign to "calm down" about attacks on his military record? Seriously? Now somehow Wes Clark's attacks are John McCain's fault? It's absurd. If Barack Obama can't control his own surrogate operation, how can he be trusted to run the country?

Luckily for McCain, those smitten members of the media only too happy to carry his water have rushed to his defense:

(T)o understand why the press is reacting with such outrage, you have to understand what they've been saying about McCain for the last decade.

There's a myth out there that the McCain campaign and the media have cooperated to create. It says that John McCain is reluctant to exploit his Vietnam POW story for political advantage, so modest and full of integrity is he. We've seen this repeated again and again, not just by McCain and his supporters but by reporters who ought to know better.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

From the first time he ran for Congress in 1982 up to the present day, McCain has made his POW story the centerpiece of his entire political career. The key moment of that 1982 campaign was when he responded to his opponent's (absolutely true) accusation that McCain was a carpetbagger by saying, "As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi." At every point since, it has been the deft use of this tool that has brought McCain renewed attention or won him a key victory.

The Columbia Journalism Review backs Clark on this one, as has MoveOn. This morning, Obama rejected the analogy that Clark was swiftboating McCain. But for all his bluster and sad sighing over this kind of campaigning, McCain no problem bringing in Bud Day who appeared in two Swiftboat ads that McCain called "dishonest and dishonorable". But hey, at least McCain is still distancing himself from Bush...or is he?

Shocking, I tell you...

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington blog:

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics asking for an investigation into whether Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) violated the Senate gifts rule by accepting lodging from Republican operative Jeff Larson. The pdf copy of the complaint can be found here.

According to National Journal, in July 2007, Sen. Coleman began paying Mr. Larson $600 per month to rent a portion of a basement apartment in a Capitol Hill townhouse owned by Mr. Larson. After the magazine began making inquiries about the senator’s living arrangement, Sen. Coleman “discovered” that he had failed to pay rent in November 2007 and January 2008, and his wife gave Mr. Larson a personal check for the $1,200. Last year, Sen. Coleman sold Mr. Larson some furniture -- a couch, table and chairs and a desk -- to cover one month’s rent, and Mr. Larson held onto Sen. Coleman’s March rent check for three months, until June 17, before cashing it only days after National Journal began asking questions.

Mr. Larson runs the telemarketing firm FLS Connect, which has been paid over a million dollars by Sen. Coleman’s campaign committees and leadership PAC since 2001. Mr. Larson is also the PAC’s treasurer and FLS has been providing it with office space in St. Paul. In addition, Mr. Larson’s wife, Dorene Kainz, has been working in Sen. Coleman’s St. Paul office, but after National Journal asked about her position, Sen. Coleman’s office announced that she would soon be leaving the office.

Unsurprisingly, Coleman went on the attack:

The only surprise is that it took Al Franken’s surrogate this long to file a politically motivated attack against Senator Coleman. The Executive Director of CREW, Melanie Sloan, was a featured guest who made at least 50 appearances on Al Franken’s radio show - appearances that were marked with theme music dedicated to her and made her a reliable attack dog for the Democrat Party. We will probably see pigs flying before she gets around to filing an ethics complaint against her former boss, and current political ally, DSCC Chairman Chuck Schumer, for his own rental arrangement. The record is clear that Senator Coleman paid fair market value for a cramped basement bedroom, and attacks by Franken’s surrogates won’t change those facts.

Yeah well, while Melanie Sloan did appear on Al Franken's Air America show frequently, CREW is hardly the only organization noticing the cozy relationship between Coleman and Larson.

Brad Reed has compiled the extensive list, but I'll give you the Reader's Digest version here. Go read the full article at Alternet:

10: Bush Gets Re-elected
9: Alberto Gonzales' Congressional Testimony
8: North Korea Conducts a Nuclear Test
7: Colin Powell's Bogus WMD Presentation at the U.N.
6: The Terri Schiavo Affair
5: Bush and Condi's Excellent Gaza Adventure
4: "Brownie, You're Doing a Heckuva Job"
3: Abu Ghraib
2: 9/11
1: "Mission Accomplished"

Seems like the hardest part is simply narrowing it down to just 10.

Gallup:

The Villagers continue to defend John McCain's honor and cling to the notion that the Maverick is still alive, but Americans are clearly seeing through the spin. It's a sign that more people are paying attention to the truth about the aging Arizona Senator, and also shows how toxic the Bush/GOP brand has become.

The Seattle Times: (h/t miss kitty)

Eighth Congressional District candidate Darcy Burner's Eastside home went up in flames today.

The fire started between 7 and 7:30 a.m. on the 3600 block of West Ames Lake Drive Northeast near Redmond, fire authorities said.

The cause of the blaze remains unknown.[..]

Her 5-year-old son, Henry, came into her and her husband's bedroom around 7 a.m. screaming there was a fire in his room, Burner said.

"I scooped him up and got him out of the house," she said. Everyone, including the family's golden retriever Bruce Wayne, made it out uninjured, but their cat did not survive.[..]

Burner said she hadn't yet considered whether the fire would impact her campaign.

"I am today focused on my family and just really grateful that my family is OK," she said. "Tomorrow I'll wake up and figure out what comes next."

Goldy has more...

UPDATED: If you'd like to help, www.helpdarcy.com has been launched: (from email)

People can leave comments of support (we'll collect a large sample and put them on a physical message board which we will give to the family) upload photos of the family to replace the recorded memories that burned, use the actblue link to make a contribution, etc. Eventually we'll also post a list of things the family needs when Darcy gets that to us. We'll also add more tools and features as needed.