While entities as disparate as Alaska Democrats and the National Review are calling for Ted Stevens to resign following his indictment yesterday, Marc Ambinder asks who else may be touched by this scandal.

Stevens himself promises to barrel on continue with his re-election campaign

"Senator Stevens' campaign for re-election is continuing to move full steam ahead. Our office has been flooded today with calls and emails from supporters urging the Senator to press on. The message from them is clear: Alaska needs Ted Stevens in the U.S. Senate."

Riiiigggghhhhttt. Meanwhile Rep Gordon Smith (R-OR) reported donated money to Stevens' campaign even after the investigation became known, and got some from Stevens in return. Jeff Merkley challenged Smith to return the funds to Stevens, something Smith initially agreed to do. But not so fast...It appears that Smith has decided to merely donate some ($10K) of the $39,000 he's received from Stevens, unlike his fellow Republicans Elizabeth Dole and John Sununu.

Could we see some further tainting of the Republican brand during this election? Mark Begich is running for Stevens' seat, he could sure use your support.

Rising Hegemon: Another endorsement...

Steve Audio: More Rethuglican 'broken government' negligence. People, it's not mere incompetence, it's their ideology.

the field negro: Toby, I think you have a hit on your hands

Sadly, No! You probably remember that fringe-dweller's favorite, The Clinton Body Count. And if you're on the wingnuttiest email lists, you've been warned about the Obama Death List. Now comes the McCain - Obama Death List, a partial list of deaths of persons connected to both John NMA McCain and Barack HUSSEIN Obama during their time as presidential hopefuls in the United States.

Susie Bright's Journal: Going Off The Rails

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: 2 Political Junkies, Rustbelt Intellectual, Cagle's Cartoon BLog, Guys From Area 51

After a barrage of false, negative attacks from Republican John McCain, Barack Obama fires back with a new ad which sends a clear message that he's not going to sit back and let the false accusations stand. The ad hits the aging Arizona Senator at his weakest point -- George Bush. True, showing pictures of McCain hand in hand with Bush is like taking candy from a baby, but it works. In the end, the ad builds on the growing sentiment that the McCain camp is running scared and leaves Obama looking...dare I say it?

Presidential.

Announcer: He's practicing the politics of the past.
John McCain. His attacks on Barack Obama:
"not true"
"false"
"baloney"
"the low road"
"baseless."
John McCain. Same old politics. Same failed policies.
Barack Obama supports a $1,000 middle class tax cut.
An energy plan that takes on oil companies, develops alternative fuels, and breaks the grip of foreign oil.
That's change we can believe in.
Obama: I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message.

If someone makes a false claim, it’s a little easier to get away with it the first time. He or she could always just claim ignorance: “Wait, he wasn’t caught in a compromising position with farm animals? Oh, I’d heard that he was. My mistake.”

When someone makes a false claim after he/she has been told it’s false, there’s less of an excuse. At that point, it goes from a mistake to a lie. It’s the difference between inadvertently misleading people and deliberately misleading people.

And John McCain is deliberately misleading people.

McCain and his campaign repeated at least two lines of attack against Obama, which when first said in early July, were called “bogus,” “wrong,” “inflated” and “misleading” by independent fact checkers.

At his town hall today, McCain repeated that Obama wants to raise taxes on those making as little as $32,000 a year and in his campaign’s response to Obama’s event in Springfield, Mo., today, repeated that “…Obama’s bad judgment led him to vote in support of higher taxes 94 times….”

Now, I won’t bore you detailing all of the ways in which McCain is lying here. Instead, I’ll just farm this one out — the claim about raising taxes on those making as little as $32,000 a year is demonstrably false, and the claim about voting for higher taxes 94 times is just as ridiculous.

I bring this up, though, because I think the presumptive Republican nominee is offering up an opportunity to create a new campaign meme: “John McCain has a problem telling the truth.”

Continue reading »

We've posted about artist Chris Jordan's work before. Here's his latest. It's an 8 foot by 25 foot mural in five panels showing the heading of the Constitution, rendered entirely with 83,000 pictures of Abu Ghraib prisoners, equal to the number of people who have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law, during the Bush Administration's war on terror. Click here to see a close up.

You Give Me Something from Undiscovered

Susy Madrak was the first blogger that was kind enough to give me some much needed advice when I first started C&L. I had no idea what I was doing back in '04 and I was emailing every blog out there a few times a day---trying to get a little traction for my video style. She explained a few things to me. What not to do so to speak. We've been friends ever since.

If you can donate a few bucks for her surgery that would be very cool.

Are you surprised that the TN Church shooter's reading material consisted of our favorite Conservatives?

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

I'm sure to Hannity and BillO, the KnoxNews is just spreading liberal propaganda around to smear FOX and Savage because of their conservative views. It has nothing to do with their extreme positions. I'm only surprised the police didn't find James Dobson and Pat Robertson reading material either, but I guess they haven't had a chance to go through all of his things yet.

Here's Barack Obama's new ad that calls out McCain's latest round of juvenile attack ads. It was Cindy McCain that said this:

Political Base:

"What you're going to see is a great debate. Which is what the American public deserves. None of this negative stuff, though. You won't see it come out of our side at all."-- Cindy McCain, Today Show, May 8, 2008:

Download | play Download | play

What happened, Cindy? Britney Spears ad---OMG.

He's practicing the politics of the past.

John McCain. His attacks on Barack Obama: "not true" "false""baloney""the low road""baseless."

John McCain. Same old politics. Same failed policies. Barack Obama supports a $1,000 middle class tax cut.

An energy plan that takes on oil companies, develops alternative fuels, and breaks the grip of foreign oil.

That's change we can believe in.

Here's the link to the latest McCain attack ad.

When asked how many lobbyists work at the McCain campaign, Rick Davis told Katie Couric: "we don't make it a litmus test for employment at the McCain campaign." But in May, after a series of reports about McCain's campaign being run by lobbyists, Davis wrote a memo outlining a new campaign policy that said: "No person working for the Campaign may be a registered lobbyist or foreign agent, or receive compensation for any such activity." (h/t Sam)

Confused yet?

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