A Little Help From Our Friends...

post from TPMCafe on 10 October 2008 09:40:00 AM. © TPMCafe

Happy Friday Caférs!

We're about to launch an extremely cool set of new community tools but first, we need your help! And quickly! It won't take much time, and it'll be fun-- we just need some testers to poke around the test site and give us some feedback. The new Cafe features are all about you and we urgently want your thoughts and critique-- ASAP-- this morning-- now!

Drop an email here: tpmbeta@gmail.com if you have any time to spare and want to be involved in creating TPM's awesome future. You know you love us.

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GOP Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) urged to come out

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 10 October 2008 09:30:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

Come out in opposition to Prop 8, the anti-gay proposition in California that's on the verge of winning. What did you think I meant?

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-urged-to-come.html

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Inverse ETFs Continue To Thrive In A Grim Market

post from Jutia Group on 10 October 2008 09:25:57 AM. © Jutia Group

In a week in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average has surrendered more than 10% of its value, inverse ETFs have continued to thrive.

A screen of the top 20 performing ETFs tracked by MSN Money for the 4-week period ending…

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I CAN'T REALLY THINK OF A TITLE FOR THIS POST,
BECAUSE IT'S EARLY IN THE MORNING.

post from Ezra Klein on 10 October 2008 09:06:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

In some ways, I think David Brooks gets this right, and in some ways, I think he gets it wrong. But I sure like reading it: "Politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission ? because it has not[...]

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http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=10&year=2008&base_name
=i_cant_really_think_of_a_title

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Polling Update - October 10th

post from DemConWatch on 10 October 2008 09:05:00 AM. © DemConWatch

Rasmussen Tracking Poll: Obama 50, McCain 45 (Yesterday: Obama 50, McCain 45).
Hotline: Obama 48, McCain 41 (Yesterday: Obama 47, McCain 41).
Daily Kos: Obama 52, McCain 40 (Yesterday: Obama 51, McCain 41).
Gallup: Obama 51, McCain 41 (Yesterday: Obama 52, McCain 41).

Four poll average: Obama 50.25, McCain 41.75 (Obama 50, McCain 42).

Here's the overall national trend from Pollster.com in a cool new embeddable format.

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http://www.demconwatchblog.com/2008/10/polling-update-october-10th.html

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ThinkFast: October 10, 2008

post from Think Progress on 10 October 2008 09:00:00 AM. © Think Progress

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV) said his panel “would investigate claims by two military eavesdroppers that they routinely listened in on private calls home from American military officers, aid workers and journalists stationed in Iraq.” Rockefeller called the accusations “extremely disturbing.”

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has repeatedly denied that she dismissed Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, over her family’s dispute over one of his troopers, Michael Wooten. But the New York Times reports that “the commissioner and his aides were contacted about Mr. Wooten three dozen times over 19 months by the governor, her husband and seven administration officials.”

In an effort to preempt “a potentially embarrassing state ethics report” on Sarah Palin, McCain campaign officials released a report yesterday that they say “clears her of any wrongdoing” in the firing of her public safety commissioner. Spokesman Taylor Griffin said the campaign report “was based on public filings and Todd Palin’s affidavit.”

The watchdog group CREW has asked the Senate Ethics Committee to examine whether John McCain violated federal laws by failing to list gambling winnings on his Senate financial disclosure forms. The group says that, given McCain’s regular gambling habit, “it is nearly impossible to imagine that he never won over $200, the amount that triggers the reporting requirement.?

On the trail today: Barack Obama will hold a rally today in Chillicothe and Columbus, OH. Joe Biden will campaign in Springfield, MO. John McCain is in La Crosse, WI, and Sarah Palin is in Cincinnati, OH.

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GOP supporters now screaming for terrorist attack
against Obama

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 10 October 2008 08:55:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

John McCain and Sarah Palin should be very proud of the modern Republican party they've helped to create. The GOP has for years been a party far too cozy with hate and intolerance - with racists, anti-Semites, gay-bashers, and religious extremists - that's why many of us left the Republican party years ago. And now John McCain and Sarah Palin, in a last-ditch effort to win at any cost, have whipped up calls for violence against their opponent that we've never seen in an election season that I can recall. Repeated calls at Palin/McCain rallies, and at election events around the country, for Obama to be assassinated. That'll go over well with women and independents. And the Republicans wonder why more and more people are fleeing their party.

John McCain and Sarah Palin have entered very dangerous territory here.

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ing-for.html

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McCain Should Be Worried

BY TAYLOR MARSHEmbedded video from CNN VideoMr. Erratic can’t seem to make up his mind. To smear or not to smear, that is the question McCain and his team seem to be asking themselves. There are other things more pressing. I know my opponent is[...]

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Marriage

Connecticut has become the third state, after Massachusetts and California, to allow gay marriage.

From the Times:

The divided court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution, and Connecticut's civil unions law does not provide those couples with the same rights as heterosexual couples.

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http://www.demconwatchblog.com/2008/10/marriage.html

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Naomi Wolf Sounds the Alarm

Naomi Wolf is one of the brave voices. She warns in this video that a coup has taken place and that we have a small window of time to reverse things within.

I agree with Ms. Wolf in most particulars but do see things in some respects quite differently. I will get to those differences at the end of this post, but first a short list of what I would describe as critical points along this sliding path to a police state which, in the American context, is probably going to look like, at least in the earliest stages, "fascism-lite."

As Wolf has pointed out in her book, The End of America, the initial stages of a "shift" contain fascist elements side-by-side with liberal democratic elements. This stage of co-existence can go on for some time, but sooner or later the fascist elements eat up the democratic ones. For those who aren't paying proper attention, in other words, day-to-day life can appear quite normal while the horrors build and build in the background.

Paying proper attention in our conditions means going outside of what the Democratic Party and the mass media are directing our attention to. Most people in this country aren't accustomed to doing this as they largely take their cues about what's going on and what they can and should do about it from the political leadership class.

But this is a terrible mistake in our case. Millions of people have got to step outside of the customary and into doing things that are outside their comfort zones. Being comfortable in one's political actions in times such as these will prove fatal.

1) The coup might be properly described as a rolling coup in that there have been distinct nodal points along the way, a description that I think Naomi would agree with (she has spoken of a "fascist shift.") The first nodal point was the surrender by Al Gore and the mass media in 2000 to the stealing of the election by Bush and Cheney. Gore could have, should have, and didn't, call for his supporters to march on the Supreme Court to demand that all the votes be counted. Once this election was allowed to be stolen in the open through the machinations of the Supremes, the die was cast for everything else that has followed.

2) The second nodal point was the USA PATRIOT Act's passage after 9/11 that gave unprecedented powers to the government to snoop and overrule core elements of civil liberties under the rubric of the unending "war on terror." The acceptance by the rest of the political leadership class of the "GWOT" has been absolutely critical to allowing the rampage of the Bush regime and their followers. It represents the foundation for a police state under any future president.

3) The third nodal point was the 2004 election being stolen - again in plain sight - with the Democratic Party and the mass media again permitting this to happen and refusing to investigate, let alone even mention, the mountains of evidence of fraud.

4) The fourth nodal point was the 2006 Military Commissions Act that abrogated habeas corpus and legalized torture.

5) The fifth nodal point was the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 that gave the president emergency powers.

6) The sixth nodal point was the Democrats' failure to defund the Iraq War and their withdrawal of language from a resolution that would have prevented an attack on Iran by Bush. In addition, in 2007 the Democratic majority in Congress also declared that they would not do anything about the eminently hackable voting machines until at least 2010, thus making a stolen election in 2008 a real possibility, indeed, a likelihood.

7) The seventh nodal point was the issuance of NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 that provided secret policies for continuity of government. When Representative DeFazio was denied access to these procedures in July 2007 and the story wasn't covered by the mainstream press, the story was allowed to pass unremarked upon.

8) The eighth nodal point was on and after April 8, 2008 when Bush admitted approving torture and the rest of the US leadership class said nothing and did nothing when they should have called for and moved immediately for his removal from office.

9) The ninth nodal point was the surrender by the all-progressives Minneapolis City Council to the police state by their green lighting the fascistic measures seen in the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis during the RNC and the failure of the mass media to give proper coverage to this clear evidence that free assembly and free speech were no longer to be respected. It reflected the coming home of "shock and awe," the use of the bogus claim of terror to crack down in pre-emptive attacks on American protestors, and the use of torture-lite on at least one protestor.

10) The tenth nodal point was the October 2008 knuckling under of Congress to the "sky is falling" claims by the White House demanding the $700 Billion bailout and the warnings to certain unnamed reluctant Representatives of martial law if they didn't vote for the bailout.

11) The eleventh nodal point was October 2008 Bush's ordering the day-to-day control by U.S. Army North, the Army component of Northern Command (NorthCom), of the 3rd Infantry Division?s 1st Brigade Combat Team who could and will be used to quell civil disturbances.

* * *

Naomi Wolf calls for the arrests of the coup conspirators by District Attorneys. While I would and do support such an action, I think that we need to be clear here on what exactly it's going to take to stem this ugly tide and turn things around. What force will it take to do this? It will take the collective actions of the masses of people in this country. Such a massive action of millions will not materialize as a single act. It is something that must be built for and our efforts need to be aimed at bringing this into being as soon as possible.

The first thing we have to realize, and I know that this is a hard truth for many to face, is that elections don't mean a damn thing in this context. Even if you believe that electing Obama is critical, the chances that the 2008 election will be stolen as have the last two is very real and likely. The grounds for "explaining" such an outcome are already with us: the white racist vote and the energized Christian fascist vote. How many times do we have to be slammed in the head with the hard reality that votes are easy to steal before we realize that putting all of your hopes into your vote isn't the way to go?

The second thing we must realize is that our energies need to go - on the level of everyday life - into mobilizing the independent actions of the people. This is what the spreading of orange ribbons and other forms of orange in everyday life means: the public declaration that we stand against torture and against imperialist wars and that we call for others to also publicly declare themselves until millions are doing this. Some might say, what will having a lot of orange do? The gendarmes will just round up the orange people. What this view fails to understand is that politics is determined by a combination of what is in people's heads and the use of coercion. Coercion only works if those who are using the force aren't losing the battle for public opinion. If enough people - who DO represent the large majority - are acting in open and public ways that manifest the PEOPLE's sentiments and that DO reflect truth and justice, then clampdowns with police state actions will not bury the movement but will expose the fundamentally monstrous nature of those using it and spur on others to step forward and further isolate the relatively small numbers who are the enemies of the people. This is a dynamic that has characterized every revolution.

Finally, I agree with Wolf's sense of urgency here. But it is crucial to understand that the window isn't quite as small as she says. Mobilization can occur under varying conditions and we are not doomed if we do not mobilize sufficient numbers in a certain time frame. If the coup conspirators aren't arrested within three months or so, in other words, they don't necessarily win. The sooner we mobilize the forces necessary, the better, and we don't have anytime to waste because Wolf is right about fascism in the making. But even after fascism is officially in power, this doesn't mean that the rebellion is doomed. We need to be on the one hand alarmed at what's going on, but we also have to guard against getting freaked out and then becoming paralyzed into inaction.

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Read The Full Article:
http://dennisloo.blogspot.com/2008/10/naomi-wolf-sounds-alarm.html