Kerry Exploring Cabinet Options

I'm going to Allentown, PA this weekend to volunteer for Kerry. Leaving Friday afternoon. There's a training session Saturday morning, and canvassing Saturday and Sunday afternoons. If anyone wants to come along and split gas/motel costs, drop me an email.

I hope to blog from hot spots around Allentown, via my neat new Airport Extreme card. Stay tuned.

Another AmCop reader outraged by General Mills' inane response to our Sinclair boycott letters provides the following list of GM brands:

8th Continent
Betty Crocker
Big G Cereals
Bisquick
Bugles
Cascadian Farm
Cheerios
Chex
Diablitos Underwood (*Venezuela only)
Forno de Minas
Frescarini
Fruit Snacks
Gardetto's
Gold Medal
Green Giant
Häagen-Dazs
Hamburger Helper
Jus-Rol
Knack & Back
La Salteña
Latina
Lloyd's
Lucky Charms
Muir Glen
Nature Valley
Old El Paso
Pillsbury
Pop Secret
Progresso
Totino's/Jeno's
Trix
V. Pearl
Wanchai Ferry
Wheaties
Yoplait/Colombo

MoveOn has unveiled their final ad, and it's really good--a clip of Bush cracking his "Oop--no weapons of mass destruction under here!" "joke," followed by a woman whose brother was killed in Iraq in April, saying "My brother died looking for weapons of mass destruction."

Watch the ad and contribute to help air it.

Scats writes (in reference to another response to his StopSinclair boycott letter, this time from Regis Corporation):

Regis asks Sinclair to not put its ads next to the controversial material and IN THE EVENT THEY DO NOT will pull the ads. Wha? What an utterly phony demand. As though someone can air your ads during time slots you don't want them to. Do they really believe they can run to consumers with that excuse, "Sinclair aired the ads against our will! Its not our fault! Please don't stop buying our shit!"

Regis Corporation does not participate in political or religious activities. Simply put, we cut hair. We employ over 53,000 people, many of whom are paid on commission, and rely on that income to support their families. By boycotting us, you are hurting individuals - our employees and their families.

We have notified Sinclair Broadcasting Group not to air our advertising during or adjacent to any political programming. That is the right thing to do. To take any further action would be inappropriate, and not in keeping with our responsibilities to our employees and our stockholders.

In return, we are asking you to remove our name from your boycott list.

Adding insult to nonsense they practically demand (demand!) that consumers don't boycott them since it will hurt their employees! Putting the culpability and costs of bad business decisions on the shoulders of consumers! I can't decide if this is disingenuous or they really think that is where the moral culpability for a boycott lies (lay? lays?).

Equally incomprehensibly they use this as a pose to appear that they aren't "buckling" to consumer demand. As though they stand for anything else besides profit! As though there's some principle other than profit behind advertising on Sinclair stations! What a cheap idiotic con reminiscent of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles pulling a gun on himself and yelling, "Nobody move or the nigger gets it!". As though consumer demand isn't their first and last command. "Buckling" to consumer demand is your raison d'être, your alpha and omega, your fucking yin and yang. If you don't want your employees hurt, pull your ads. The market is speaking bitches, and it demands your abject obedience on pain of insolvency.

How hypocritical and sanctimonious these 'captains of industry' get when you make it clear to them that they are the lowest of whores. Like poor pathetic Tucker Carlson in the face of Jon Stewart, "I'm hurting America?! You're hurting America!" These are the same pukes who blather endlessly in tones of mystical rapture about free-market social darwinism, then turn and get appalled and self-righteous at the lack of consumer altruism when it effects their bottom line. As though we should buy shit to be nice to people who make shit we don't want. Apparently the vaunted democratizing effects of free-markets are worth high praise as long as the hoi polloi doesn't get any ideas about voting with its pocketbook. Trade is coercion suckers, get used to it. You lost the moral high-ground a long time ago.

The hater taught hate, that's why we gangbangin' it.

Rat weighs in on the latest suppressed 9/11 report:

Because it's an internal CIA report, Bush likely isn't implicated directly. The L.A. Times article- says the report examines "whether agency employees should be held accountable for intelligence failures." The political advantage Kerry derives from people calling for the report's release may be greater than the fallout from the report itself. "Bush suppressing CIA report" fits in nicely with the reality-based community / fantasy world meme: Kerry believes "that solutions emerge from [the] judicious study of discernible reality," while Bush attempts to create his own reality. Kerry wants the facts; Bush discards, denies, and suppresses facts that are inconvenient.

The "pre-9/11 mindset" debate presents another possible angle. If Bush is unwilling to read, and unwilling to let Congress read, a report detailing the intelligence failures leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the executive and legislative branches can't adequately design changes in the intelligence community necessary to avoid the dangers of the "pre-9/11 mindet" that Bush finds so dangerous. As Cheney is so fond of pointing out, we are "faced with the possibility that terrorists could smuggle a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon into the middle of one of our own cities." Surely we want to have as much information as possible about what went wrong the last time to ensure that there's not a next time.

From Giuseppe Abote:

Kerry wins the kids vote in a landslide, 57-43. Note that the Nickelodeon poll has correctly predicted the winner of the last four presidential elections.

The good folks at StopNader.com have a new ad they're going to run in swing states where a Nader margin could make the difference. Check out the ad and then contribute if you are so moved.

Anyone who doesn't believe Kerry has the momentum should take a look at the results of the new Pew poll, which has closed to a dead tie after showing Bush with a 7-point lead two weeks ago; and the last three rolling daily Zogby polls, which all show a dead tie; and the latest TIPP poll, which shows a tie after having found a 4-point Bush lead as recently as last week. These three pollsters show Bush pulling a not-good-enough-for-re-election 45%, 46%, and 45%, respectively.

I've recently been thinking back to the '92 election. I was a senior in high school then and didn't know jack shit about politics (although I was generally rooting for Clinton, having moved out of my early-adolescent neo-fascist Republican phase). So I hadn't been following the race closely. It was the day before Halloween, I think; I vividly recall standing in Anna's Italian Deli at lunch, waiting for my manicotti; and I glimpsed an article on the front page of USA Today that quoted George Bush as saying something along the lines of "If these guys get elected, every day will be like Halloween...witches and goblins everywhere..."

The quote struck me as so insane, and more importantly so sad and pathetic; it became clear to me in that moment that Clinton was going to be elected president.

So please, be on the lookout for Halloween-themed jibes from the Bush campaign, and if you find any pass them along. Of course this time around it'll be witches riding nuclear-tipped broomsticks and goblins smuggling WMDs into New York and Columbus, OH; but hopefully the writing will be on the wall, and the outcome will be as good.

This is hilarious. This story about a pre-Iraq war meeting in which Pat Robertson "warned" Bush that Iraq would be "a disaster," and Bush allegedly assured Robertson that there "wouldn't be any casualities" has been going around the blogs today, but now CNN is running it.

Additionally, God (who provides Robertson with polling information) has apparently shifted his prediction from a Bush "blowout" to a "razor-thin" victory.

I've donated a bunch of times this season to the Kerry campaign and the DNC. Now that it's coming down to the wire, and the outcome of the election is increasingly in the hands of Get Out The Vote organizations working on the ground, I've been thinking about the Congress.

Think about where we'll be on November 3 (assuming, perhaps foolishly, that a winner in the presidential election will have been declared). Either Bush or Kerry will be in the White House for the next four years. Now assume both houses of Congress remain in Republican hands. If Bush is president, this will mean at least 2 years of rubber stampism--they'll let the psychopath get away with murder. If Kerry is president, a GOP Congress will mean relentless and irrational obstructionism, the immediate launching of witchhunt investigations...if you think Clinton got screwed in 1994, you have not seen the wrath of a Party twice scorned.

Imagine how much it would suck for President Kerry to have to contend with a 51-49 Republican Senate. A shudder just went through me.

It's an uphill battle for both the Senate and the House, but we're doing a hell of a lot better than anyone had thought. We've got literally margin-of-error Senate races in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Alaska, South Dakota, and now (and quite unexpectedly) Kentucky. House races across the country are neck and neck.

I've been listening to many of the House candidates appearing as guests on Air America Radio, and I really sympathize with these folks. A little money can go a long way in the small races. Donating to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is the best way to get your money to the people who can get it to the candidates who need it the most, fast.

So if you haven't yet given out your last-minute dough, I encourage you to keep the Congress in mind.

Contribute to the Senate Dems. (click "Contribute")

(By the way, when you donate to the DSCC your money gets matched dollar for dollar until Octover 28.)

Contribute to the House Dems.

Another way to help elect congressional Dems. Two of the Big Bloggers, Atrios and Kos, have set up special pages where you can donate to a group of House and Senate candidates in close races whom the bloggers have chosen to support.

Donate to Atrios' candidates.

Donate to Kos' candidates.

And for godsake if anyone out there STILL hasn't ante'd up for Kerry (via the DNC) do it NOW.

Scats received a deeply moving reply to his Sinclair-boycott letter from General Mills, one of the advertisers. Here's an excerpt:

As viewers, each of us is free to make a choice. We can choose to patronize or not patronize programs with our viewership. We can choose to patronize or not patronize particular television stations, or even entire networks.

Similarly, advertisers may choose not to sponsor certain broadcasts, a particular network or specific publications because of their journalistic standards and judgment. But advertisers should not attempt to control or pre-empt news programming prior to broadcast or publication. That, in our view, would be inappropriate.

In this instance, as in the example cited earlier, passionate voices are calling on advertisers to insert themselves into the election by threatening to boycott those who remove or who do not remove their advertising.

We choose to stand with freedom of the press.

We welcome the views that you and others have shared with us. You may rest assured that we will remind the networks we sponsor that the integrity of their reporting reflects on the companies that advertise during their broadcasts.

Hopefully, you will understand our views – and the importance we place on a free press.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact us and share your views.

Sincerely,

General Mills

They "choose to stand with freedom of the press," huh? Well, corporations just do what they do, I guess. So do blogs. So I say: go to fucking hell General Mills, you satanic pigs. What do you make, cereal? Never again will I eat your fucking cereal. (Not that I would have, anyway; the indie hippie-brand cereals are quite prevalent here in NYC, and many are actually cheaper than the corporate brands, not to mention better tasting. Health Valley and all that crap. Good stuff.)

Note: While it is wonderful that the blogosphere has done such a good job of keeping this story in the public eye, the latest Sinclair news is clearly a bunch of horseshit coming out of a company hellbent on airing their propaganda, despite the fact that they're practically shitting themselves, watching their stock plummet and their value downgraded.

Keep the pressure on. Write to or call the advertisers politely and respectfully threatening boycott. Again, if you don't have time to write a letter, use mine.

Also: Former FCC chair Reed Hunt has been providing very interesting and informative letters to Josh Marshall, interpreting the ongoing Sinclair saga.

Some folks have been asking why Kerry didn't run an ad featuring Kristen Breitweiser, the 9/11 widow who voted for Bush in 2000 but was driven to despair by Bush's balking the 9/11 Commision, and has now endorsed Kerry.

Well, the ad was released today. If you dig it, chip in some dough.

just nailed it (paraphrase): "It's almost as if Bush has created this country where people are willing to martyr themselves for him because he's promising them paradise in the afterworld."

Vote for Bush = Martyr yourself. The choice is clear.

(AP) Karl Rove laid himself on the line for his boss, the president of the United States.

That is, he laid himself under the wheels of Air Force One on Monday. Reason: Unclear, but it seems to have been an inside joke between Rove and President George W. Bush.

Returning to the aircraft after Mr. Bush's foreign policy speech, the two men traded words. As Mr. Bush climbed the stairs, his top political adviser set his briefcase down in front of the tires and stretched out on the ground with his back to the wheels.

Rove stood back up moments later; a smiling Bush waved from the plane and they both got aboard.

"It was a humorous moment on the campaign trail," was all Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel would say about Rove's antic.

Rove's "antic"? OK. We've been shown a sign. Feel free to offer interpretations in the Comment window.

This Sinclair shit isn't going away, people--though it's nice to see that Sinclair stock dropped nearly 8% today. Here's the latest plan from StopSinclair:

Thanks to you we have gathered more than 107,000 signatures for our StopSinclair petition in less than one week. On Friday, we brought our interim petition to the headquarters of Sinclair Broadcast Group in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Today, we are asking for your help to make sure that Sinclair doesn't get away with misleading swing states voters.

To counter this $9.9 million dollar illegal campaign contribution from Sinclair Broadcasting Group to the Bush/Cheney campaign we will run full-page newspaper ads on Thursday and Friday to put the spotlight back on the Bush/Cheney record.

We need to raise $65,000 in the next 36 hours to do this.

Donate Today: http://stopsinclair.kintera.org

I'm in for $20. What do you say?

The new CBS/NYT poll shows the race dead even, and Bush's approval rating at 44% ("dangerously low for an incumbent," as the CW goes). But what I found particuarly illuminating was this paragraph buried almost at the end:

On Iraq, Americans no longer see the war as Mr. Bush does. A majority now say the war is either a minor part of the war on terrorism or no part at all. Only 37 percent say the war in Iraq is a major part of the war on terrorism.

If, as many pundits are saying, the "new" CW is that the election is largely a referrendum on the situation in Iraq, this is bad news indeed for the li'l shithead.

Dear Safliar,

Don't you get tired of writing lies? Especially at your age--after a lifetime of doing nothing good for the country, for the world--do you have nothing better to do than to join in a cheap, desperate smear of John Kerry? That you're still trying to keep alive this non-story shows how desperate you are. I hope that John Kerry's victory in the November 2 election will finally snap the fragile thread that binds you to this life--a life you obviously fear and despise--and send you plummeting towards whatever hell is reserved for nasty, soulless liars like yourself.

Rot in hell,

Blicero