LiberalLand

For years, John McCain has told the story that, when asked by his Vietnamese captors to name the members of his squadron, he would instead name the starting line-up of the Green Bay Packers.  But when telling the same story to KDKA poltical editor Jon Delano it was suddenly the Pittsburgh Steelers whose starting line-up was the one he recited.  From his 1999 book Faith of My Fathers:

Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.”

In 2005, when A&E ran the movie version of the book, McCain discussed this incident on CNN:

“That was the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers, the first Super Bowl champions, yes,” McCain responded. But it’s — it was the best I could think of at the time.”

But when in Pittsburgh, do as the Pittsburghians do:

“When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”

“Did you really?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

“In your POW camp?” asked the reporter.

“Yes,” McCain said.

“Could you do it today?” asked the reporter.

“No, unfortunately,” McCain said.

And he couldn’t have done it back then, either, probably, as since it was the Green Bay Packers whose line-up he used.

KDKA has the video.

Those of us who knew Tony and of his valiant fight against colon cancer are in shock today.  I first met Tony in the mid 1990’s when we were guests on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect”.  He was funny, even with the dispair of illness; he was smart, hard working and devoted to his family.  Most of all, he was decent and kind.  Rest in peace, friend.

From: Robert
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 10:46 PM
To: alan@alan.com
Subject: great show!

I just would like to tell you how much I dislike you. First of all, my address is *********** TX. You may want to know this for the record in the event you have a backbone. Being the liberal pussy that you are, I doubt that you do… I watch Fox news and the H & C show pretty much every day and up until now, I have been able to reconcile why Fox has your pussy ass as a marker for Hannity, but I just can take hearing your stupid liberal (wrong) views any longer. I can’t stand looking at your skinny, emaciated, fagot ass any more. I am sure that Fox pays you stupid money for being the token liberal, but I think it is time for you to move along to CNBC, NBC or ABC. You would be a nice complement to the idiot talking heads that produce the daily O’slama endorsements on the network morning shows. It would give me great pleasure to physically stomp your ass into a mud hole. Come on down and let me show you some good old Texas hospitality…..fagot.

Robert

From: Alan
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 11:21 PM
To: Robert
Subject: RE: great show!

Mr. ****,

Don’t be such a girl.

Alan

And there are already critics saying a long-time Washington insider like Connecticut’s Senator Dodd wouldn’t represent “change”, but the Hartford Courant points out his legislative achievements, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act and his work on behalf of first responders.  Also,  he is a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.  And even Joe Lieberman says recent headlines alleging he got VIP treatment for a loan shouldn’t be a drawback.

Dodd says, “There’s been some inquiries, yeah.  They ask for a lot of stuff.  I’ll leave it there.

Saying we’re a nation of mentally depressed whiners seems to be one of the least controversial things McCain economic advisor and former Senator Phil Gramm has said.

He has a long history of wacky views, as Think Progress chronicles.

“Minimum wage laws tend to cut the bottom rung off the economic ladder. The plain truth is there should be no minimum wage law in this great land of free enterprise.” - Gramm, 5/17/89

“We’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat.” - Gramm, 9/6/81

And here is what Gramm said about Bill Clinton’s 1993 budget, which led to the surplus Bush destroyed:

“I want to predict here tonight,” he said on the evening that Clinton’s budget passed in the spring of 1993, “that if we adopt this bill the American economy is going to get weaker and not stronger, the deficit four years from today will be higher than it is today and not lower … When all is said and done, people will pay more taxes, the economy will create fewer jobs, the government will spend more money, and the American people will be worse off.”

• When an Army whistleblower tried to protect the media’s right to cover military funerals, she was fired. Gina Gray, the former Public Affairs Director for Arlington National Cemetery, tells her story.
• A new bill in Congress aims to save fuel by imposing a National Speed Limit. Would it solve America’s pain at the pump?
• It’s the Friday Night Free-For-All!

The swastika was painted on the arm of her 7-year-old daughter.  The mother is a white nationalist and says what she did was stupid.  It was the second time the child showed up at school thusly decorated.  Child and Family Services have taken both the daughter and a 2-year-old son out of the home.  But if that is the belief of the parents, should the government intervene?

Now they know what we have to live with.  Before leaving the G-8 meeting in Japan, Shecky Bush did a little joke.  The reluctant environmentalist, the one who’s refused to join international efforts to combat global warming, the non-signer of the Kyoto Treaty, said, “Goodbye from the word’s biggest polluter.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared shocked at the comment Bush made before leaving the G-8’s last meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido, where the leaders of the world’s richest nations had been discussing new targets for cutting carbon emissions.

One official who witnessed the extraordinary scene told the Telegraph: “Everyone was very surprised that he was making a joke about America’s record on pollution.”

This wasn’t the only gaffe the White House made this week during the G-8.

On Tuesday…an embarrassed White House issued a formal apology to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi for having distributed a biography to reporters that noted his “convictions on a number of corruption charges” (all overturned) and used the word “suave” to describe him.

President Obama will have lots of work to do.

No matter how effective I am in any given segment, it’s not good enough for the posters at DailyKos.  Although Diego was kind enough to write a post called “Colmes Nails Giuliani”, along with a transcript of our discussion on oil, the the comment section is less than glowing:

• Colmes was actually mildly effective in an argument? I thought that was against his contract.
• How much does it pay anyway, being a professional doormat?
• “The Milquetoast Hour with Alan Colmes.”
• First time I’ve ever read the words “Colmes” and “nails” next to each other.
• It occurs frequently, but in reverse order
• “Colme’s nails ….tightly clenched Hannity’s buttocks as he reached down to kiss tha ass of the man that allows him to appear on television”
• Alan Colmes’ Testes Dropping?
  He must be getting tired of being upstaged by the ampersand.
• Shows just how weak of A Politician Guiliani is when ALAN FRIGGEN COLMES nailed him LOL
• Alan Colmes is like Beating the Start Screen of a video game.
• I never watch Hannity & Colmes precisely because of Colmes.
  Losing an argument with Alan Colmes is like losing a debate with an empty chair

I have often commented on how conservatives rally around their own, no matter how far off the beam they are (witness the embracing of McCain) while liberals eat their young.  Perphaps if I shoot each conservtaive who comes on our show and render them vegetables? Would that be enough?

At a county meeting, in a discussion about ticket collections, commissioner Kenneth Mayfield said, “It sounds like Central Collections has become a black hole.”  Commissioner John Wiley Price said that kind of language is unacceptable.  Mayfield, of course, meant the term in the astronomical sense, a black hole being a collapsed star with no physical properties but a gravitational pull so great that even light can’t escape.

But his annoyance doesn’t stop at “black hole”. Upsetting to him are also “devil’s food cake” and “black sheep”. 

“So if it’s ‘angel food cake,’ it’s white. If it’s ‘devil’s food cake,’ it’s black. If you’re the ‘black sheep of the family,’ then you gotta be bad, you know. ‘White sheep,’ you’re okay. You know?” Price said.

Fox 4 in Dallas has video.

• Congressman Dennis Kucinich tells Alan why he’s renewing his efforts to impeach President Bush.
• Judge Andrew Napolitano explains why he’s so troubled by the Senate vote to back the White House on wiretapping.
• Are “Men at Work” signs sexist? PINK Magazine’s Founding Editor Cynthia Good thinks so. She’ll debate the Culture Campaign’s Sandy Rios.

Phil Gramm, whose deregulatory banking policies led to the economic turmoil we’re now experiencing says what we’re going through is a “mental recession” because we’re “a nation of whiners.”  Gramm is a top economic advisor to John McCain, but the McCain campaign is distancing itself from his comments.

A McCain official said: “Phil Gramm’s comments are not representative of John McCain’s views. John McCain travels the country every day talking to Americans who are hurting, feeling pain at the pump and worrying about how they’ll pay their mortgage. That’s why he has a realistic plan to deliver immediate relief at the gas pump, grow our economy and put Americans back to work.”

The economy is fine, according to comments Gramm made to the Washington Times. We’re just ungrateful.

“You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

It’s not the economy; it’s the media, stupid!

“Misery sells newspapers,” Mr. Gramm said. “Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day.”

Glenn Greenwald has always had the best take on our Consitutional rights.  Democrats who voted to grant immunity to telecoms who spied on us, thus giving a pass to the Bush administration as well, ought to be ashamed.  It pains me that this includes Barack Obama.  This Democratic-controlled Senate couln’t get passed the Dodd amendment which would have kept the FISA bill in tact but would have eliminated the immunity provision.   They couldn’t even pass the Bingaman amendment, which would have at least have allowed the results of an audit of the telecommunication companies to be completed before granting them immunity. 

Russ Feingold has it right:

Orrin Hatch believes that if you want to stand up for the Constitution, you’re akin to someone in a tin-foil hat.

Here is the dishonor roll of Democrats who went along with the Bush administration, ignoring our fundamental rights:

Democrats voting in favor of final passage of the FISA bill: Bayh - Carper - Casey - Conrad - Feinstein - Innuoye - Kohl - Landrieu - Lincoln - McCaskill - Mukulski - Nelson (Neb.) - Nelson (Fla.) - Obama - Pryor - Rockefeller - Salazar - Webb - Whitehouse.

Shame on each of those above.

Jesse Jackson has a problem with Barack Obama’s stance on the government’s involvement in faith-based charities and thinks he’s talking down to black people.  So incensed is Jackson at Obama that he wants to “cut his nuts off.”  Unfortunately, Jackson expressed this sentiment in front of a live microphone. 

Jackson apologized for any offense he may have caused, and said,

“My support for Senator Obama’s campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal.  I cherish this redemptive and historical moment.”

Especially unusual is a press release put out by the reverend’s son, Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. of Chicago:

“I’m deeply outraged and disappointed in Reverend Jackson’s reckless statements about Senator Barack Obama.  His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee — and I believe the next president of the United States — contradict his inspiring and courageous career…

“Reverend Jackson is my dad and I’ll always love him.  He should know how hard that I’ve worked for the last year and a half as a national co-chair of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.  So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric.  He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.”

 I’d love to be at the next father-son dinner.