In what may or may not portend a VP announcement by Barack Obama, Reutersis reporting that:
U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign has bought $5 million worth of advertising time from NBC Universal to run TV spots during the Olympic Games, a source familiar with the deal said on Wednesday.
The package, believed to be an unprecedented political media buy for the Olympics, includes commercials that will run on the NBC network and cable channels such as USA, MSNBC and CNBC during the August broadcast of the Summer Games, the source said.
Presidential candidates typically purchase more target buys specific to a particular media market rather than national ad buys. Wouldn't the Olympics be a great time to introduce the new VP candidate to the nation?(More below the fold....)
Word buzzing around the DC media rumor mill is that national outlets CNN and the Washington Post are currently working on a blockbuster story involving Missouri Governor Matt Blunt.
I'm alternately laughing and thrilled at what just happened on Hardball.
If you haven't heard of Kevin James, Republican shill, I suspect you'll be seeing him all over YouTube in about 30 minutes [yep, although I overestimated the time by about 28 minutes].
He was spouting the "Neville Chamberlain" talking point and Chris Matthews just totally took him to school. My rough transcription of the more memorable comments are below the flip...
Update [2008-5-15 20:36:48 by Glic]:
The latest McClatchy/Mason-Dixon poll (pdf) shows the primary race in Pennsylvania continuing to tighten with only a 5-point spread, Clinton, 48% and Obama 43%.
Both Clinton and Obama backers seem equally committed; for each candidate, 92% say they are likely to stick with their choice and not change their mind.
Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. conducted this poll from
April 17-18, 2008. A total of 625 registered Pennsylvania
voters were interviewed statewide by telephone. All stated they
were likely to vote in the April 22nd primary election. The
margin for error is +/-4%. (embargoed until this morning)
Clinton has slightly higher favorables:
Hillary Clinton 57% (1% didn't recognize her name...who ARE they?)
Barack Obama 52%
Clinton snags the Catholic vote, 63-30%, and Obama takes Protestants by almost the same margin: 60-31%. Clinton wins the Jewish vote 73-17%.
Obama wins big with those who care about change (68%) and Clinton wins on the experience factor with a whopping 91%.
Most of of us "get" what the uproar over Jeremiah Wright's comments is about. To those who are inclined, it's permission to give into their fear of the brown man with the funny name. The mock outrage of the right wing punditry conveniently ignores that their preachers have not only been using incendiary anti-US rhetoric for decades, but they have been celebrated for it. What was the "punishment" of the Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer who said this:
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.
With 38% reporting, Missouri is too close to call. No votes are in yet from St Louis city, and most of St Louis County and the KC metro have yet to report. Elections are won and lost in these areas, so it will be an interesting night indeed.
Whoa. I had to keep checking the url in my address bar - how was this diary, entitled: "Freakin' Awesome Obama Music Video",allowed to remain on RedState (a bad case of 'The Directors' ennui, perhaps?)? The diary's author leads off (I'm not going to link - they can drive their own traffic and it's easy enough to find):
I don't care if you are the biggest Obama hater out there -- you WILL think this video is cool. Obama's "Yes we can" speech in New Hampshire was historically memorable. This video cements the inspiration found in his words. He may be full of hopeful air but if you take the speech in a more personal way, it can certainly rustle something good in your heart.
What an odd new poll we have from Fox "News". While they're currently running a story that, true to their dishonest and jingoistic nature, tries to paint Democrats as unpatriotic, it includes questions about who prays for whom:
Have you ever said a prayer for President Bush?
Have you ever said a prayer for soldiers serving in Iraq?
Have you ever prayed for the war in Iraq to end?
Minutes ago, in a bizarre news conference this morning at the White House, President Bush's last question was what were his thoughts on the MoveOn ad "mocking" Gen David Petraues. (And by the way, this seemed like a plant - a question on which Bush could end with a "big bang".) The questions was by 'David' somebody (not Gregory). Bush said "welcome back, David". I'll get the transcript and the identification as soon as I can and will update.
I've transcribed Bush's answer:
I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus but on the MILITARY....that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are AFRAID, or MORE AFRAID, rather, OF IRRITATING A LEFT WING GROUP LIKE MOVE ON THAT THEY ARE OF IRRITATING THE US MILITARY".
Does anyone beyond the troglodyte base still believe this?
The attorneys for Brent Wilkes, who faces over 30 counts bribery, fraud, money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Duke Cunningham, have issued subpoenas for Dennis Hastert, Roy Blunt, and 11 others (listed below). All have said they do not intend to comply with the subpoenas.
Wilkes' attorney, Mark Geragos, did not immediately return messages Tuesday. Some lawmakers declined comment while others issued statements saying they didn't know why they had been subpoenaed and had no information to provide.
"Despite requests for further information from the law firm, we do not know why Mr. Blunt has been issued this subpoena. We have absolutely no information," said Blunt spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier. "The House counsel has determined that compliance with this subpoena is inconsistent with House rules," she added.
"This subpoena is a mystery," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who represents a district near Cunningham's. "I have no knowledge of information pertaining to the charges pending against Mr. Wilkes that would aid either the defense or the prosecution in this case."
Conservative propogandist, Stephen Hayes, wrote the book The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America and, to this day, refuses to let facts get in the way of his espousing that there was indeed a meaningful relationship between Saddam Hussein.
It was particularly enjoyable seeing this clip of Hayes getting completely destroyed and his tired talking points shoved right back in his face by Bill Maher and a very angry Tim Robbins on the season's first episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.
One of the great lines was when Maher, asking about Cheney's comments from the 90s noting that Iraq would be a post-invasion quagmire says:
"I know what you're going to say: '9/11 changed everyting'. Now forgetting that in itself is a huge lie because it didn't - if it did we'd have a draft, we'd have raised taxes, we'd have gotten off the oil..."
I'm a sucker for good haiku. I like the exercise of condensing thoughts and ideas into the 5-7-5 pattern.
I stumbled on a winger blog called "Sensible Mom" who has a post mocking the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's haiku contest:
Rather than publishing the photos of suspected terrorists at the request of the FBI, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer decided to host a haiku contest. Here's my entry:
The PI cowers
Thinks poetry is answer
Will blame Bush after
The poor thing doesn't get many comments in her posts, so I thought I'd create a haiku in her comments thread. Well, once I started I couldn't stop...my entries below.
The very changeable Arlen Specter, the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican, has given the Bush administration until noon Tuesday to clarify the testimony of Alberto Gonzales.
According to The Hill, Specter "emerged from a crucial Monday briefing and gave the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the controversy over apparent contradictions in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony."
"Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales’ veracity] from the administration ... by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media," Specter wrote in the statement. "The administration has committed to producing such a letter."
Survey USA has just released a poll on the public's reaction to George Bush's desicion to commute Scooter Libby's sentence. An overwhelming majority - 60% - believe it was the wrong decision.
Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is on "Meet The Press" right now and Tim Russert just asked him if he was prepared to go as far as holding in contempt those who refuse to comply with a subpoena. Leahy upped the ante by responding that that would be up to the entire Congress, to which Russert asked if Leahy personally would be willing to go that far. Leahy responded, "Yes, I would go that far.."
This is my transcription as they were talking and is not from a transcript from MTP so there may be slight errors.
"You have to go to the next step to see if they have a legitimate claim of executive privilege...then you invoke the contempt citation."
Russert: "Are you sure the US Attorney would prosecute?"
Leahy: "It would be very difficult for them not to"
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave..." And, boy, was there some deceiving being practiced in Show Me State.
Mark Fernlund "Thor" Hearne is in the thick of it (previous diary with links for background here). Hearne is a member and principal of the Lathrop and Gage law firm and served as National Election Counsel for Bush/Cheney in '04 and Missouri Counsel in '00. In 2005 he founded the American Center for Voting Rights, a GOP front group that was designed to perpetuate the "voter fraud" myth and subsequently suppress the Democratic vote. It was dissolved in May.
The incurious Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that is. McClatchy Newspapers went back and tallied up how often Thomas has spoken and asked questions during oral arguments. We know he doesn't talk much and votes as he is told but, really, Clarence isn't even pretending to be engaged; he is just phoning it in here:
But the last time Thomas asked a question in court was Feb. 22, 2006, in a death penalty case out of South Carolina. A unanimous court eventually broadened the ability of death-penalty defendants to blame someone else for the crime.
