After 2 years as a blog, All Things Democrat is returning to its roots and will soon reopen as a new discussion forum.

For those of you who have known this site since the beginning, you’ll recall that we started as a forum, but then became a blog.  Much of the reason for that change was simply to get in on the fun; blogs were hot, forums were not.  However, the primary goal of this site was to be an online community for lefties and others supportive of Dems, and as a blog we weren’t moving toward that goal.  We were just one of a thousand struggling blogs desperately seeking to have a post acknowledged (or sometimes stolen) by the big blogs (kudos to Crooks and Liars for being the exception).  On the other hand, a forum is, by definition, an online community.  I’m glad that we went through the blog experience, but I look forward to being one of a handful of lefty forums focusing on community, instead of competition.

So, please check back at the end of August for the official launch of our new All Things Democrat Forum.

From the Borowitz Report:

Saying he is “sympathetic to late night comedians’ struggle to find jokes to make about me,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) today issued a list of official campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes.

The five jokes, which Sen. Obama said he is making available to all comedians free of charge, are as follows:

Barack Obama and a kangaroo pull up to a gas station. The gas station attendant takes one look at the kangaroo and says, “You know, we don’t get many kangaroos here.” Barack Obama replies, “At these prices, I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, “I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.” Barack Obama replies, “She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American Dream.”

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” Barack Obama replies, “His jockey just lost his health insurance, which should be the right of all Americans.”

Q: What’s black and white and red all over?
Barack Obama: The New Yorker magazine, which should be embarrassed after publishing such a tasteless and offensive cover, which I reject and denounce.

A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, “This joke isn’t going to work because there’s no Muslim in this boat.”

I’m popping through Sirius talk stations and catch Bill Bennett saying that the focus on foreign policy has had the effect of showing how callow and inexperienced Barack Obama is. Bill Bennett is a tool.

As Crooks and Liars pointed out earlier this week, while Obama - a while back - got pummeled for slipping and referencing the “president of Canada,” McCain’s multiple references to policy concerning Czechoslovakia, a country that has not existed for 15 years, have largely gone unnoticed.

This mindset is part of the pass McCain is enjoying in the media: despite repeated and multiple mistakes and contradictions and flip-flops, everyone’s just sitting back with a shit grin on their face saying “s’all good.”

To be clear: John McCain does not qualify for POTUS because he is a veteran, is not experienced at foreign policy because he got off his ass in DC once in a while and visited foreign countries, and does not garner my respect simply because he is my elder; he’s pretty much everyone’s elder, and respect must be earned.

Old != Wise

You need only one idiot photoshop to push into some goodothers.

Launch 3 missiles capable of crushing Israel: acceptable. Photoshop the release images: crap. And even if you can crush Israel, you look stupid.

I’m still scared because of Iran’s missiles and what that means for Israel and - by proxy - us.

Yay Photoshop!

I swear when he hits the G8, he drinks heavily. From the Telegraph:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Everyone remember Bush’s impromptu shoulder massage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel - at the G8?

The most powerful American is the Ugly American manifest.

I was reading this bit by Media Matters - one of dozens - that talk about… well:

On both his radio and television shows, Bill O’Reilly again cited Sen. Barack Obama’s ranking by the National Journal as the “most liberal senator” for 2007, without noting the rankings’ subjectivity. O’Reilly did not note that the rankings were based not on every vote cast by senators in 2007, but rather on “99 key Senate votes, selected by NJ reporters and editors, to place every senator on a liberal-to-conservative scale.”

Of course, O’Reilly also doesn’t mention that McCain didn’t earn a rating in this absurd, subjective exercise because he didn’t vote enough to be rated.

Every once in a while, I emerge from this haze of media anesthesia, this consistent lack of reporting all the facts - this thing that keeps Media Matters in business - and fly, burning-fisted into outrage: how can they do this? Why is no one doing anything about it? And just as my tornado inferno gets twisting, I collapse on myself, realizing that there are thousands of screaming voices - in the blogosphere. And because of how we humans are, my voice and thousands of others are shouting only to those who want to listen, and -by and large - are the other screaming voices.

People who need to hear that Barack Obama is not a Muslim don’t have a computer and won’t turn off Fox News.

And ignorance - not Fox and not talk radio - is our kryptonite: we have no defense and few effective ways to counter it.

Your thoughts?

As you may know, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment against President Bush about a month ago. It was immediately pushed into “committee” where everyone can forget about it because the idea of accountability, along with the Constitution, has also been raped and walled up in an unused portion of Big Government’s basement.

Sign Kucinich’s petition to push these articles. Maybe, just maybe, the congress we elected two years ago could get something important - and meaningful - done before the Criminal leaves office.

All Things Democrat supports all lefty bloggers, especially new and small blogs.  We have several resources designed to save you time and improve the look and content of your blog:

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All are available in the Resources tab in the top menu.  Enjoy!

This comes to us from the good folks at Media Matters (and so do the pics):

During a segment in which Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe “attack dogs,” Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered — the journalists’ teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe’s hair moved further back on his head.

As someone who is a web and graphic designer - and has worked in graphic design in the television industry - this is piss-poor on many, many levels:

• Skill - 2/10 - This appears as though some production lackey’s mentally-challenged son had a couple classes in Photoshop or got ahold of the Quantel Paintbox and a six pack. “Heh heh…yellow teeth. An I’ll mak’im balder - where’s the airbrush?” And then the farting begins.
• Wit - 1/10 - If you’re going to make caricatures, then make caricatures, cleverly adding in appropriate details. You don’t say “he’s an attack dog” and then show his face MS-paint-pasted on a poodle. The man/poodle shop that appears in the video is a testament to the lack of both skill and wit.
• Tact - 0/10 - What happens when you have no skill or wit? You make these shopped-up photos and present them as the real stock photos of the people. Then you get caught and everyone knows you’re a shady douche.

But this douchebaggery is endemic in conservative and Republican circles: they do not understand humor or wit or what people actually laugh at, so they use underhanded methods to attempt to make fun. Case in point: “The 1/2 Hour News Hour” since canceled from FOX’s lineup. “Heh heh, see what I did there? It’s called the News Hour, but it’s only a half hour - go figure! Ever wonder why you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?” And it probably took a whole room of conservatives to come up with the title of the show - collectively as witty as a box of hair - let alone the acting and writing that had the production value of high school video morning announcements.

But I guess when you genuinely find poor people or brown people or gay people or smart people funny, you can’t exactly make jokes like that. Because then everyone would know you’re mean.

Just in case anyone had the misconception that the push to attack Iran was just Bush/Cheney or even just Republican. Democratic leadership will also be to blame. Another blank check is about to be written…

Whatever you believe as a Democrat or Liberal, we need to not elect John McCain as a nation.

Check out this link to make a last-minute June donation to the DNC and derail the RNC next November.

Seriously. Now.

The Telegraph:

President George W Bush requested and received funding of $400 million (£200 million) for the plan after he made a secret appeal to Congressional leaders last year.

The money is likely to be used for operations carried out by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, according to the New Yorker magazine.

The appeal for funds “was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change” said the magazine.

Alternet:

In the scenario concocted by Cheney’s strategists, Washington’s first step would be to convince Israel to fire missiles at Iran’s uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Tehran would retaliate with its own strike, providing the US with an excuse to attack military targets and nuclear facilities in Iran.

This information was leaked by an official close to the vice president. Cheney himself hasn’t denied engaging in such war games. For years, in fact, he’s been open about his opinion that an attack on Iran, a member of US President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” is inevitable.

Huffington Post:

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said that President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to be elected.

…so how do we stop it?

A couple new additions to our blogroll:

• The Rural Bus Route
• Bill’s Political Blog

If you were trying to run the country, if you were going to personally see to it that bills were signed into law, wouldn’t you - perhaps - make an appearance at your current job that made those things happen in lieu of being the POTUS? Especially if that job was paid for by taxpaying Americans? McCain does not think so.

This is a couple days old, but worth a mention.

One of McCain’s top advisers, Charlie Black, said that a terrorist attack would be a “big advantage” to McCain’s campaign. This, of course, makes sense; if someone’s breaking into your house, you want daddy to come out with a baseball bat, not a diplomat. And John McCain seems willing to bomb the crap out of anyone.

McCain, of course, responded with “I cannot imagine why he would say it. It’s not true. I’ve worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear. I cannot imagine it, and so if he said that — and I don’t know the context — I strenuously disagree.” Ah, quoting doesn’t quite capture the stammering as well.

It’s a tough position: if he agrees, he appears monstrous for thinking such unthinkable thoughts; if he “strenuously” disagrees, it looks like posturing and naivete. I guess he opted for bullshit. Par for the course.

John McCain is proposing a prize of $300 million to show he cares about the environment, too, durnit!

The Arizona senator proposed a $300 million prize for whoever can develop a better automobile battery, and $5,000 tax credits for consumers who buy new zero-emission vehicles. The latest proposal is in addition to his support for overturning the federal ban on offshore oil drilling.

How much better? Eh, he didn’t say.

Is there a end date, a realistic goal? Eh, he didn’t say.

Does McCain have any practical knowledge of how batteries work that would lead him to believe - aside from tapping his fairy wand - that this is a tangible goal? Eh, he didn’t say. And if he did, he’d probably cite Moore’s Law and then call anyone who corrected him an intellectual elitist.

This is the most half-assed political posturing I’ve seen in a while.

Washington Times:

The government is testing drugs with severe side effects like psychosis and suicidal behavior on hundreds of military veterans, using small cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found.

In one such experiment involving the controversial anti-smoking drug Chantix, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert its patients about severe mental side effects. The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police.
…
Mr. Elliott, a chain smoker, began taking Chantix last fall as part of a VA experiment that specifically targeted veterans with PTSD, opting to collect $30 a month for enrolling in the clinical trial because he needed cash as he returned to school. He soon began suffering hallucinations and suicidal thoughts, unaware that the new drug he was taking could have caused them.
…
“You’re a lab rat for $30 a month,” Mr. Elliott said.

We’ve started an illegal war halfway across the world and young men and women went to support our country at any cost. When they’re there, we don’t give them what need, farm out their meals, their suppliers - their health and safety - to no-bid, private contractors like Halliburton who steal from the soldiers in providing sub-standard services and products and steal from Americans by charging 3 to 20 to 100 times reasonable cost from what we pay in taxes. When they come home, if they’re injured, they stay in slum medical facilities “maintained” by our government. If they’re not physically injured, they don’t receive proper attention and care for mental illness or PTSD. And we still haven’t passed a decent GI bill to toss out a few “gimmies” - like fully-paid college education - to our deserving veterans.

And now it comes to light that our own government, knee-deep in Big-Pharm money, are taking on veterans - already hard-up for money because of lack of proper government care - who would sell their sanity, what health they have left, for $30/mo. $30 a fucking month!

It doesn’t matter what you think about the war(s) or how they got started: Why are we not taking proper care of the men and women in our country who felt the call to fight on the behalf of our leaders?

How could we let a man who honorably served in the military get to the point of “needing” $30/month?

How do we allow drug companies and our government to treat these heroes like rats?

What the hell is wrong with our country?

If early 1800s represented an Era of Good Feelings, our times should go down in history as the Era of Bad Feelings. Nowhere has that been better exemplified than in the current nastiness pervading the Democratic Party. Although Barack Obama has for all extensive purposes won the nomination, the forces of Hillary Clinton claim she deserves to be the candidate and that they would rather vote for someone else or not vote at all than vote for Obama. (more…)

MSNBC:

Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after a sudden heart attack at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said. No details were immediately available.

Russert, the recipient of 48 honorary doctorates, took over the helm of “Meet the Press” in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.

In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

This is truly upsetting. Tim, our thoughts are with your family.