BlogPulse Top News Stories for Mar 30, 2008
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Money, TOP HEADLINES
BlogPulse Top Videos for Mar 30, 2008
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under 2008 Candidates, Bush Powers, Celebrity Nonsense, Clueless, Daily Cartoons, Deserved, Double Standards, Fuel News, Idiot Ideas, Legal Ramblings, Media Fools, Money, Mortgage Mess, Total Nonsense, Videos
[Elink] Top 40 Pranks For April Fool’s Day
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Clueless, Daily Cartoons, Deserved, Idiot Ideas, Total Nonsense, Uncategorized
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Added: 2008-04-01 00:25:35 Looking for the top pranks of all time? With April Fools Day just around the corner, its time to get your prank on. |
[Elink] Mobile Phones ‘More Dangerous Than Smoking’
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Clueless, Daily Cartoons, Deserved, Idiot Ideas, Total Nonsense, Uncategorized
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Added: 2008-04-01 00:13:00 Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation. |
[Elink] Top 100 April Fools Hoaxes
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Clueless, Daily Cartoons, Deserved, Idiot Ideas, Total Nonsense, Uncategorized
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Added: 2008-03-31 19:21:25 100 of the Greatest Pranks! |
Open Thread and Diary Rescue
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Bush Powers, Capitol Hill, Clueless, Deserved, Double Standards, Idiot Ideas, Legal Ramblings, Money, Uncategorized
This evening’s Rescue Rangers are vcmvo2, jlms qkw, jennyjem, dadanation, YatPundit and noddem, with Patriot Daily and Avila as editors.
- After attending an eco-conference, mem from somerville wonders will it take a disaster like The Triangle Shirtwaist Moment to motivate more people to address global warming. (jlms qkw)
- RandomNonviolence offers up a very well-researched and well-laid out picture showing what military spending is doing to our economy in Our Money is Off to War. (noddem)
- gjohnsit segues the movie Wag The Dog into an introduction to the Mexican Civil War– by way of the events which catalyzed that bloody conflict — in a incredibly rich and powerful diary Ten Tragic Days. (dadanation)
- PapaChach has a heart-breaking homework session with his 9-year-old and assures him that true love will find you in the end. (jlms qkw)
- In Jekyll Island GA : The blatant indifference of Georgia legislators on display, seaturtles explains why this development is going forward despite resistance from the “ordinary people.” (vcmvo2)
- Matt from Iraq, who is IN Iraq, cleverly points out the big differences during McCain and Obama’s Phonecall II. (jlms qkw)
- Stunning. And not in a good way, but the kind that makes you dizzy with anger and shame. For the list of the possible contenders for the President to let get away with their criminal behavior while serving this administration, check out abundibot“s diary The Pardon List. (dadanation)
- altruista writes about the difficulties in finding work in Up Against the Machinery: Work in 21st Century America. (vcmvo2)
- jimmyjack learned something important by participating in the Texas Primary, as he explains in Lesson Learned from the Travis County Texas Primary Caucus. (jennyjem)
- First-time diarist ChrisR matches candidates with teams in Political American League Preview. Let’s play ball! (jlms qkw)
Elise has tonight’s Top Comments: Fashion Police.
Enjoy these excellent diaries and please add your own favorites in this open thread.
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One last nag
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Bush Powers, Capitol Hill, Clueless, Deserved, Double Standards, Idiot Ideas, Legal Ramblings, Money, Uncategorized
Nag!
Joe Garcia takes on the South Florida Cuban mafia
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Bush Powers, Capitol Hill, Clueless, Deserved, Double Standards, Idiot Ideas, Legal Ramblings, Money, Uncategorized
Many of you saw this over the weekend:
An aide to President Bush has resigned in the midst of an investigation by the Justice Department over allegations he misused U.S. grant money intended to promote democracy in Cuba, the White House said Friday.
Felipe Sixto, a Cuban American from Miami, was the special assistant to the president on inter-governmental affairs, dealing with Cuba and other issues.
Sixto was until last summer the chief of staff of Frank Calzón, the head of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba. Sixto did not respond to e-mails and calls to his home Friday [...]
Neither Calzón nor the White House revealed how much money was misused but people familiar with the investigation say several hundreds of thousands of dollars could be involved — an embarassing development coming just weeks ahead of the Bush administration’s roll-out of its 2008 Cuba grant program. White House spokesman Blair Jones said the White House learned of the allegations from Sixto himself as he resigned from his post on March 20.
Blue Majority candidate Joe Garcia has been fighting this corrupt Cuban mafia for years. At a debate with Calzon almost a year ago, Garcia challenged Calzon on allegations that his organization was misusing federal funds. It’s in Spanish, so most of you won’t understand the language, but watch it and you’ll still get the gist. Joe Garcia is the person calm and collected in his seat, while Calzon storms in and out of the studio accusing Garcia of all sorts of horrible things. Heck, the screen capture says it all:
The entire South Florida anti-Castro machine is a racket, so much so that even the Bush Administration is being forced to distance itself from it:
The Bush administration is undertaking a major do-over of the controversial Cuba democracy grants, restricting the funds available for anti-Castro groups in Miami and sending more resources to non-U.S. international advocacy organizations, officials and others familiar with the programs say.
The new orientation, which has sent tremors of uncertainty among many grant recipients in South Florida, comes as the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development prepare to award a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants this year — more than triple the 2007 levels.
This corrupt group is a major source of funding for the Florida Republican Party, and it flexes its political muscle via the three south Florida Cuban Republicans — Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — and Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
That’s why Wasserman-Schultz is protecting those three Republicans, despite being a co-chair of the Red-To-Blue DCCC program that should be, by all rights, aggressively backing the three Democrats challenging those seats.
Wasserman-Schultz may think she’s protecting those Republicans and their corrupt patrons. She’s got her benefactors to please.
But we don’t have to. Let’s send a message and show that while the corrupt Florida Cuban mafia may have bought off a key Democrat, especially one that can protect their electoral prospects, we aren’t. And we can support a candidate who has been demanding transparency and accountability for federal anti-Castro dollars long before it was popular to do so.
LA-01, LA-06, MS-01: More special-election fun
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Bush Powers, Capitol Hill, Clueless, Deserved, Double Standards, Idiot Ideas, Legal Ramblings, Money, Uncategorized
There are three more special elections for the U.S. House coming up in the next five weeks, on the heels of the two we enjoyed in early March (where Democrats Bill Foster and Andre Carson enjoyed impressive victories).
Next on the table is the race in Mississippi’s 1st District (to fill the seat of now-Senator Roger Wicker,) which will be held on April 22. Both parties’ nominees will be determined tomorrow via runoff elections tomorrow.
Subsequently, Louisiana’s 1st and 6th Districts will hold special elections on May 3 (to fill the old seats of now-Governor Bobby Jindal in the 1st, and now-lobbyist Richard Baker in the 6th).
All three of these districts are generally solidly red territory. The most Democratic of the three is LA-06, and that is hardly blue territory (it is R+7 according to Cook PVI, and Bush swamped Kerry 59-40 there). Nevertheless, we have a legitimate shot at winning that race, and the potential for a somewhat competitive race in MS-01 as well.
LA-01 is one of the most strongly Republican districts in the nation. Cook ranks it as the 16th-most, in fact, as it sports an impressive PVI of R+18.5. Bush managed 71% of the vote in LA-01 against John Kerry, following up on his 67-31 victory over Gore in 2000.
Bobby Jindal won 88% of the vote in 2006, after winning 78% in 2004, and his predecessor David Vitter did just as well; Diaper Dave got 82% in 2002 and 80% in 2000.
Our candidate is Gilda Reed, a psychology professor and DKos diarist. She’ll face off against the Republican winner of an April 5 runoff between State Sen. Steve Scalise and State Rep. Tim Burns, with Scalise being the favorite to win the nomination.
Reed’s campaign has generated a good bit of excitement here, and while I don’t want to be a wet blanket, I think this district is as close to invulnerable for the Republicans as you can get. That’s not a criticism of Reed, who is running hard. It’s just that it would take something north of a miracle for a Democrat to win here at this time.
The Baton Rouge-based LA-06, however, is nowhere near as strongly Republican, and the special-election race here has become a serious pickup opportunity for Democrats. As Kos noted on Friday, the Cook Political Report has moved their ranking of this race to “Tossup”, which is surprising and impressive considering the district’s Republican bent.
Our candidate will be determined in a runoff election on Saturday, April 5 (as will the Republican candidate). The Democratic runoff pits the frontrunner, State Rep. and conservative Democrat Don Cazayoux, against fellow State Rep. Michael Jackson. The winner will presumably face off against Republican frontrunner Woody Jenkins, the 1996 candidate for U.S. Senate.
As evidenced by the Cook ranking, Cazayoux is given a pretty good shot at winning the race. I’d say a win here would still be an upset, but it’s certainly plausible. This should be a fascinating race to follow over the next month.
The race in MS-01 is somewhere between the two Louisiana races; it isn’t a top-tier race by any stretch, as LA-06 is, but I think we’ve got a slightly better shot here than in LA-01. It’s a very tough district, R+10, but not quite forbidden territory. Tomorrow’s runoff election pits Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers against State Rep. Steve Holland on the Democratic side, while Republicans Greg Davis and Glenn McCullough face off.
Both Childers and Holland have posted decent, if unspectacular, fundraising numbers. This race is a very long shot, but should be at least worth keeping an eye on.
With at least one top-tier race, and three races in all, it should be a highly interesting month.
Nag nag nag nag nag
March 31, 2008 by
Filed under Bush Powers, Capitol Hill, Clueless, Deserved, Double Standards, Idiot Ideas, Legal Ramblings, Money, Uncategorized
Nag.
Update: About 150 contributions shy of 1,000 for Leslie Byrne, about 215 for Joe Garcia. Are you really going to make me beg? Let’s close this out!
