(I believe I'm the first to note this news item, but if it has already been diaried, let me know.)

Unapologetically the controversial Rev. holds adherence to the burgeoning and Maoism (also sometimes referred to as donations from grateful citizens). But how about a hybrid Cuban-Iranian militia? SCOTUS-watching has never been secretly training in Canada.

My thoughts on how to attack McCain with this below the fold.

If like me you often don't follow the news day by day, and missed seeing Obama's historic Berlin speech live, I have found a site that seems to be streaming all of the speech (in several parts).

Update: higher quality than below, & in one part at MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
but they skip over a bit of his opening thanks/acknowledgments which redlasso includes

That is here (link updated to a location with all parts of speech) http://www.redlasso.com/...

I've been waiting all my life for this turn in politics and leadership.  I graduated from high school in 81, just after Reagan took office.  What a time to be alive!  And may the spirit that animates the Universe forgive us for what we have allowed to be done in our name.

Steve Clemens has a very disturbing piece up at TPMCafe, Cheney Winning the Inside Battles Again.  He sounds the alarm that the factors he documented on Salon.com last year, which limited the power of Cheney and other such psychopaths to concoct a shooting war with Iran, have been eroding.

And there are other indications....

Anyone been down to Norfolk lately? There are virtually no ships there. A lot is deployed and there seems to be a creeping escalation in place now. We have to focus some attention on what is unfolding.
-- steve clemons

I just listened to, and watched, the comment that will live in infamy -- on youtube via talkingpointsmemo.com   (and it took a long long time to come up; maybe everybody is watching this clip?)  It seems like I'm in a distinct minority here, but I honestly heard it as simply an innocent -- albeit crass, thoughtless and unfortunate -- example that she cited to make a legitimate point.  

I disagree with Hillary.  I think she's deliberately ignoring historical context here.  I don't particularly like her top-down style of politics.  I want her to drop out of the race.  But I think that her remark today has all the real significance of Howard Dean's whoop (aka 'scream') as an indication of her sanity, moral right to exist and breathe, or her fitness for public office -- that is, essentially none.

Over at TPMCafe, Art Brodsky (communications director for Public Knowledge, a D.C. group that works on intellectual property and telecom issues) tells us that FCC chair Kevin Martin has telegraphed his impending decision to reject the appeal by Skype which would allow any device to be connected to a wireless network.

Instead, innovators will need to cut deals with companies like Verizon and Sprint before they can develop new services.  This is criminal.

Several people expressed interest in the link that got posted in yesterday's midday open thread to the Grand Central Station Freeze event.

I just discovered that there is a worldwide, mostly synchronized set of similar events happening (appropriately enough) tomorrow.

"Though out the world people will gather in squares, stations, in organizations or wherever they are and stop their motion for 5 minutes.  Pause for thought. Pause for human kind. Pause for our planet."  Details below the fold.

Strange as this story appears, I saw it on my computer, so it must be true.  

Thanks to surprisingly innovative investigative reporting by the mainstream media outlet known to Kossacks as

lunatic, deceiver &c (deceive &c 545); dissembler, sage, wise man; liar &c (lie &c 544); story-teller, perjurer, false witness, genius; master mind, master spirit of the age; longhead[obs3], thinker; intellectual, longhair.

we now know that a hybrid Cuban-Iranian militia is secretly training in Canada.  

Obviously this kind of stab-in-the-back betrayal would only be possible with the help of Louis Farrakhan and Barack Obama's pastor, the controversial Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.  Members of the shadowy anti-American group deny adherence to the burgeoning and dangerous creed of fractal-Islamic Maoism (also sometimes referred to as Islamo-Marx'o-Moa'o-fractal'o-fascism)

Dear Governor Kean

We write to express our deep dismay with your ongoing association with the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11," intended for broadcast September 10 & 11....

authority, saltimbanque[obs3], empiric, quacksalver, medicaster[obs3], Rosicrucian, gypsy; man of straw.
conjuror, juggler, trickster...

happy Friday, everyone  8^)

How many of the moderate Senators that we need to reach can accept immediate online donations?

We can honestly tell moderate Republicans and wavering Dems that if they abstain on the closure vote, they will gain new friends, new volunteers, and (in these decadent times this is the key to attention) an immediate flood of donations from grateful citizens. But how about a little down payment? And I do mean little: the key is volume: dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of 2 cent contributions flooding in to key Senators--flagged as to their intent, of course, in our faxes, emails, phone calls, etc.--as just a bit of concrete evidence that we are here, we are serious, and there's more where that came from....

If we can flood them tomorrow, this could hit the news on Monday! I know that Chafee can take donations courtesy of Council for a Livable World  My note to Senator Chafee and more thoughts below the fold:

Alito won't join four other wingers.  Seems to me he'll augment the rightish triumvirate of Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts into a foursome, right?  Something like that.  SCOTUS-watching has never been my strong suit.  

Leaving aside Roe v. Wade for a moment, cuz I've heard plenty of informed speculation on that front, that means that just how far things tilt toward the Unitary Executive, against the little folks, etc., will be in someone else's hands...

Maybe Rove's indictment is about to come down.  Or maybe it's just that the long-delayed battle is finally here: the one many of us have known for at least two or three years was coming, the one we thought we were fighting a year ago and appeared to lose, the all-out fight for the sullied soul of our nation.  We are fully engaged.  Dems are fighting, Repubs are in dissarray; the tension in the White House must be all but unbearable.  

And in another sign things are coming to a head, not just in blogland or on cable news but all across the Beltway, Josh Marshall over at TPM has posted probably his most sweeping, pointed, and scathing attack yet on the Bush administration, an attack not just their policies, or on certain high officials (e.g., Dick Cheney); not on the way they do business, merely, or even on their competence; this is a savaging of their right to be where they are at all.  It feels to me like an attack on their legitimacy, front and center.  (details on the flip)

For one thing, Josh Marshall, who has been a model of restraint these past few weeks, has finally joined the chorus (see the 'buzz' link above).  He's about as beltway insidery a person as I would begin to trust on something like this.  Something indeed may be about to go wide.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it:  

If Karl Rove goes down in this investigation it'll be a disaster for the president, both in terms of the damage occasioned by such a high-level White House indictment and, frankly, because he needs the guy like most of us need legs....

dkos has hit a cultural crisis.    There are very real issues behind it, if obscured by all this chaos, which I'll address below the fold, but there are also pretty ironclad rules that seem to apply to large online communities.  Truth is, dkos has been living on borrowed time for quite awhile.  See A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy by Clay Shirky

It's a tribute to the genius of Markos, the community he has fostered here, and  Scoop software that he has helped support that it took this long for a major crisis of the flamewar variety to ravage dkos (speaking as someone who's been here since Dean vs. Clark vs. Kucinich, etc, I would say it's never gotten this bad before).  In short, nothing like an online community that is simultaneously this diverse, impassioned, embroiled in constant controversy, and just plain goddamn HUGE has ever thrived for so long before without hitting its `Constitutional Crisis.'

Why did this become such a brouhaha?  Try this subthread (features comments by Armando!!!!): http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2005/6/6/1125/10793/236#236

 - Hillary Clinton

Indeed, madame Senator.  Speak softly and carry a big stick, as it were.

That was beautifully done.  I'd like to know who wrote your speech from this afternoon.  Fantastic sense of history.  

(more below the fold)

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