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More Wooten Footage

post from TPMMuckraker on 05 September 2008 05:47:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

CNN just aired a little more footage of their interview with Alaska trooper Mike Wooten, who's at the center of the Sarah Palin Trooper-Gate affair. Among other subjects, Wooten talks about Tasering his 11-year old stepson.

Check it out:

video details and more

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TPMmuckraker/~3/WT8vdDvt8C8/more_wooten_footage.ph
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DNC Day 4: Invesco or bust (part 2)

post from Cotton Mouth on 05 September 2008 05:41:00 PM. © Cotton Mouth

Finally settled in my seat, I pulled out my steno pad and prepared to try and be a journalist. By day I am a network engineer, so my journalistic skills are all ad-hoc. I would be lying if I did not say I was not a little bit intimidated by the masses of professionals to my flanks. I thought for a second and realized that I had a single credential just like them and would one day regret any opportunity missed by not wanting to make an amateur mistake. The speeches started with C list speakers like the Denver mayor of former mayor. My noted were flying fast and furious with each speaker for the first couple of hours.

There was music between every speaker, sometimes live, other times prerecorded. Almost all of the music fit in to the change theme of the night. The press section behaved like a fairly normal press section, with the exception of us rowdy bloggers sprinkled in. Outside our sections there was a party going on. As one analysis I read put it, this looked like an American convention instead of a political convention. There were old and young, black, white, latino and others, white collar and blue collar, straight and gay, everyone was there. It was like they went and picked the first 80,000 folks they could find and drew a beautiful cross-section of America.

August 28 is a specail day in American history. Barack Obama's history making speech was set to occur 45 years to the day when Dr. King gave his "I have a dream" speech in front of 200,000 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Wrap your head around that for a while and see if you don't get a little choked up, or maybe you had to be there. John Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement, spoke for about 10 minutes while parts of the Dr. King speech were played over the P.A.

Will.i.am. came out and performed his viral youtube hit "Yes We Can" to the actual video on the big screen behind the stage. At one point Stevie Wonder made his way to the stage and performed two songs. One I had never heard, the second being "Signed, Sealed, Delivered". The place nearly came unglued during Stevie's performance. Sheryl Crow played a 4 song set at one point. "A change will do you good....", or something like that was the big song that the crowd joined in on.

The atmosphere per the New York Times was part political convention, part Woodstock. After watching the stiff GOP convention this week I get what they were alluding to. Our convention was a celebration of achievements reached, and of the impending change Barack Obama will bring to Washington. I was brought to the point of joyful tears several times before the man even took stage. This was a party like no other.

As day faded to night, the guest list morphed from the C-list to the B-list and finally to the A-list. Bill Richardson gave a spirited speech in front of a nearly packed house, a just reward for his support despite the heat he felt. Governor Kaine of Virgina spoke as well. For this blogger the night revolved around two speeches, Al Gore and Barack Obama.

Coming: Al Gore and Obama speech breakdowns

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st-part-2.html

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Some Straight Talk About Self-Absorption

post from Daily Kos on 05 September 2008 05:40:41 PM. © Daily Kos

Numbers have a liberal bias, my friends, and counting is an elitist activity:

In a 50-minute speech, McCain used the word "I," or variations like "me" or "my" or "myself," more than 200 times.

That's about twice as many references to personal self-greatness as Obama used in Denver.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/uEIgc-AxCGI/49395

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Rep. Virgil Goode rails against ‘anchor
babies’

post from Think Progress on 05 September 2008 05:40:00 PM. © Think Progress

In a debate on Wednesday, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) repeatedly used the derogatory term “anchor babies” when talking about the issue of undocumented immigration, calling for a “fix” to the situation:

GOODE: There’s not going to be a consensus in Congress to fix the anchor baby situation until you get more persons like me who are willing to say, No to the anchor baby and no to the Nancy Pelosi’s of this Congress, who depends on the Hispanic Caucus. … But you don’t have blanket anchor babies occurring day in and day out in the United States of America and having the taxpayers continue to foot the bill. They come in from Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, and have ‘em in this country.

Watch it:
video details and more

Deporting these legal citizens would require a constitutional amendment stripping the natural-born citizen clause from the Fourteenth Amendment. No wonder Goode’s opponent, Tom Perriello, said there is “exactly zero chance” Goode’s “fix” could pass.

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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/05/rep-virgil-goode-rails-against-anchor-babies/

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Iraq Papers: Saddam's Oil Contracts

post from IraqSlogger.com on 05 September 2008 05:33:50 PM. © IraqSlogger.com

Most of the mainstream Western media reported - but gave little heed - to the recent agreements between the Iraqi Government and International oil companies to exploit Iraq's vast oil resources.

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http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/6292

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U.S. Plans to Seize Fannie and Freddie

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 05 September 2008 05:26:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

I'm going to wait for Chris to wake up in Paris in a few hours to give us analysis of what this means. NYT:

Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday informed top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance giants, that the government is preparing a plan to seize the two companies and place them in a conservatorship, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.

The plan, effectively a government bailout, was outlined in separate meetings that the chief executives were summoned to attend on Friday at the office of the companies? new regulator. The executives were told that under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced, and their shareholders virtually wiped out, but that the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.

It is not possible to calculate the cost of any government bailout, but the huge potential liabilities of the companies could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and make any rescue among the largest in United States history.

Here's the Washington Post's take:

The government has formulated a plan to put troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal control, dismiss their top executives, and use government funds to prop them up, government officials told the two companies yesterday, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

Under the plan, the federal government would place the firms in a legal state known as conservatorship, the sources said. The value of the company's common stock would be diluted but not wiped out while the holdings of other securities, including company debt and preferred shares, would be protected by the government.

Instead of giving each company a big capital infusion up front, the government plans to make quarterly infusions as the companies' losses warrant, the sources said. This would be an attempt to minimize the initial cost of the rescue.

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McCains Convention Backdrop Epic Fail

post from Crooks and Liars on 05 September 2008 05:20:57 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Video Update: Sit Room’s Abbi Tatton just reported on the story: Download | Play Download | PlayThe internets were abuzz immediately when this strange shot of McCain during his RNC acceptance speech gave more ammo during closeups for another Colbert Report ‘McCain Green Screen Challenge‘ to videophiles with a knack for chroma key effects, but what [...]

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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/05/mccains-convention-backdrop-epic-fail/

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B-List Demons

The RNC comes out with a second attack ad that starts by mocking Obama for addressing a large group - this time at Mile High stadium (the first mocked Berlin). It runs in 12 states. But what's more interesting is the weak choice of "liberal boogeymen"[...]

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Mark Belling called Gloria Steinem a "grizzled
old bag," "old witch"

On the September 4 broadcast of The Mark Belling Late Afternoon Show,radio host Mark Belling called author, activist, and Ms. magazine co-founder Gloria Steinem a "grizzled oldbag," and an "old witch." Belling made these remarks whilediscussing Steinem's September 4 LosAngeles Times op-ed, in which shecriticized Sen. John McCain's choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidentialrunning mate. Belling also asserted: "She [Steinem] was the cutting edgefeminism. Feminists prior to her were the[...]

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http://feeds.mediamatters.org/~r/mediamatters/latest/~3/384480919/200809050016

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