In the unlikely event that you haven't heard by now Senator Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens was convicted of seven counts of corruption related charges yesterday.
Stevens guilty on 7 counts, won't quit Senate race
WASHINGTON – Ted Stevens, a pillar of the Senate for 40 years and the face of Alaska politics almost since statehood, was convicted of a seven-felony string of corruption charges Monday — found guilty of accepting a bonanza of home renovations and fancy trimmings from an oil executive and then lying about it.
Unbowed, even defiant, Stevens accused prosecutors of blatant misconduct and said, "I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have."
The senator, 84 and already facing a challenging re-election contest next Tuesday, said he would stay in the race against Democrat Mark Begich. Though the convictions are a significant blow for the Senate's longest-serving Republican, they do not disqualify him, and Stevens is still hugely popular in his home state.
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Stevens faces up to five years in prison on each count when he is sentenced, but under federal guidelines he is likely to receive much less time, if any. The judge did not immediately set a sentencing date.
Odds are he'll resign once the election is over. At this point he mainly just acting as a GOP place holder so that Gov. Palin can appoint a Republican to fill his vacant seat should he be reelected. That'll give the state GOP time to regroup and field a candidate with a chance of winning by the time the special election is held. Hopefully his conviction will mean an end to corruption in the GOP. And maybe the fact the Stevens conviction occured on Teddy Roosevelt's birthday is a portent of better things to come from the GOP once they finish their time in the woodshed.
Osama bin Laden, mastermind of September 11th, the person that many people talk about and still have concerns about, calls this fight, the fight in Iraq, “the third world war.”
Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that — you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11
PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.
Also if you'd be so kind as to Digg that post I'd greatly appreciate it. Its also on Reddit.
*Update* As always I put my money where my mouth is.
*Further Update* According to a tweet from internet icon Jonathan Coulton Mr Rogers is in a bit of danger too. Looks like its a bad day to be a classic American icon.
Apparently scheduled to run tonight during the convention...
Speaking as someone who donated to both Obama and McCain during the primaries in the hopes that we'd see the cleanest election in years I can say that I don't believe that any other GOP candidate other than John McCain would have bothered to do this.
DENVER - Barack Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, became the first African-American ever nominated for president by a major political party after delegates to the Democratic National Convention chose him as their standard-bearer Wednesday.
The nomination process, a subject of debate and speculation right up until the voting began late in the afternoon, ended when Obama’s chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, asked her supporters to join in accepting Obama’s historic nomination by acclamation.
Regardless of how you feel about Obama you have to admit that his nomination represents a milestone in American history. In less than a generation we've gone from legalized discrimination to placing a minority member one step away from leading the nation.
Now the question is, in regards to the history books, can he pull a twofer?
WASHINGTON — Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, at 84 the longest-serving Republican in the Senate and one of its most powerful members, was indicted Tuesday on seven felony counts alleging that he lied to conceal his acceptance of $250,000 in gifts and services from a now-defunct Alaska oil services and construction company. ... The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Washington, charges that Stevens made false statements on his annual Senate financial-disclosure statements for the years 2001 through 2006 to conceal gifts from VECO Corp. and its chief executive officer, Bill Allen. If he's convicted, Stevens could face an unspecified fine and as much as five years in prison.
If hope that if he is found guilty that he punished to the fullest extent of the law. Additionally I hope that he is the last of the corrupt Republicans still in office. I have little doubt that had the GOP not been in the majority he either would have kept his nose clean or been indicted sooner. That brings me to one of my chief concerns about an Obama presidency. I fear that should the Dems control the house, the senate, and the Oval Office that we'll see the same level of corruption and excess. To me this is one of the most important functions that divided government serves. By that I mean as long as one party feels that the other is is breathing down their neck waiting for them to screw up they tend to stick to the straight and narrow.
Not that that alone is enough to push me into the McCain camp mind you. He's not the McCain of 2000. However as both he and Obama are moving to the middle the differences in the views on major issues are starting to dissapear. If that continues and both of them prove to politicians rather than leaders in my case the divided government arguement may prove to be the tipping point in McCain's favor.
That is of course provided that I don't become totally disgusted with both candidates and throw my vote Bob Barr's way. After all in Texas that vote would be just as a significant as a vote for Obama.
He gave a solid, but not inspiring, speech which was pretty well received considering the audience's strong pro-Obama leanings. What's more important to me though is the fact that he actually bothered to speak there considering how few votes he'll garner for his troubles. However I think he seemed more like the McCain of 2000 than anything we've seen of late. It was a good first step by McCain to make the GOP seem like a more inclusive party with a few good ideas.
Iran said today it had test-fired a long-range missile capable of reaching Israel and U.S. troops in the region, a step promptly condemned by the Bush administration as heightening tensions over the country's suspected nuclear weapons program.
The roughly 1,200 mile range of Iran's Shahab-3 rocket has been known for several years, but the test firing -- and pointed statements from Tehran about the country's "capability in hitting its enemies" -- added to a tense climate.
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The Islamic Republic News Agency reported that the missile was test-fired as part of a larger military exercise by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. In Tehran, the Associated Press said that as many as nine missiles of different sizes were fired during the exercise, carried out partly near the Persian Gulf shipping lanes that Iran has threatened to close if it is attacked.
A top Iranian official said this week the country would also retaliate against Tel Aviv if any targets inside the country are struck.
"Our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch," Revolutionary Guard Gen. Hossein Salami said today, according to the wire service.
The missile tests and statements from Iranian officials are part of a recent sharp back-and-forth between Iran, Israel and the United States that have formed the backdrop to ongoing negotiations about Iran's nuclear program.
This is most definitely a response to the recent Israeli war games and was meant to send a message to Israel. Considering that Iran supposedly has stealth capable missiles I'm certain that its meaning was crystal clear. It's also a pretty good indicator of how well our current tactics in dealing with Iran are working. Those aren't going to change anytime soon so lets see what our presidential hopefuls had to say about this incident....
Senator John McCain issued the following statement:
“Iran’s most recent missile tests demonstrate again the dangers it poses to its neighbors and to the wider region, especially Israel. Ballistic missile testing coupled with Iran’s continued refusal to cease its nuclear activities should unite the international community in efforts to counter Iran’s dangerous ambitions.
Iran’s missile tests also demonstrate the need for effective missile defense now and in the future, and this includes missile defense in Europe as is planned with the Czech Republic and Poland. Working with our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran, not unilateral concessions that undermine multilateral diplomacy.”
And Senator Barack Obama, speaking on NBC’s “Today” show urged “aggressive diplomacy” when it comes to Iran:
“There’s no doubt we’re seeing rising tensions in the area, and it’s part of the reason why it’s so important for us to have a coherent policy with respect to Iran. It has to combine much tougher threats of economic sanctions with direct diplomacy, opening up channels of communication so that we avoid provocation but we give strong incentives for the Iranians to change their behavior. We’ve got to have the kind of aggressive diplomacy that unfortunately has been absent over the last several years.”
This is one area in which I agree with Obama however I'm not certain that he'd use some of the stronger diplomatic tools at his command were he to become president (example: blockading Iran's ports should concrete proof of Iran's nuclear weapon program become available and they fail to abandon pursuing nukes afterwards.)
McCain's insistence on continuing the current administrations policy towards Iran is more troubling. After all isn't performing the same actions repeatedly and expecting different results one of the definitions of insanity? Additionally McCain's "Bomb bomb bomb Iran" and his more recent kill Iranians comment don't score him any points with me at all.
There is a middle ground between the two stated positions and what I want is for one of the candidates to channel Teddy Roosevelt and be willing to go there. Is that too much to ask?
Once in a blue moon an artist emerges and becomes a dot on the time line of their chosen medium. Today one of those innovators, Bo Diddley, passed away....
Bo Diddley was a musical innovator who helped forge the sound and contributed to the style of rock 'n' roll. He sported a trademark fedora, played an iconic square-shaped guitar and from it he extracted a deep, rusty reverb and a peculiar playing style that influenced generations of players.
Diddley died Monday of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla.; he was 79. He'd been in ill health for much of the past year, having suffered a stroke and a heart attack in 2007.
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"He was by far the most underrated of any '50s star,'' says producer Phil Spector. "You listen to those (reissued box sets) and the rhythmic invention, the consistent high quality of imagination and performance, the excellence of the writing, the power of the vocals - nobody else ever did it better or had a deeper, more penetrating influence.'' ... Who Do You Love? is among his most covered songs, a touchstone for an entire generation of '60s rockers looking to put their own spin in the blues. It has been covered on live and studio recordings by the Rolling Stones, the Band, the Doors, Townes Van Zandt, the Jesus and Mary Chain, George Thorogood and Cross Canadian Ragweed. ...
He was born Ellas Otha Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss. He was raised in Chicago by his mother's cousin and took her last name, going by Ellas McDaniel. In Chicago he played music in church and on street corners. His handle was either the handiwork of childhood classmates, as he once stated in an interview, or flipped from the diddley bow, a homemade instrument of African descent shaped roughly like a guitar with a single string and played with some implement in a slide style.
Just like the name, he was known for making up his own way of playing the guitar, and also for creating his own instruments.
His first single was the Bo Diddley/I'm a Man, released in 1955. His music during the late-'50s and '60s - on the Chess and Checkers labels - defied easy categorization. There existed obvious elements of blues and gospel, but it's resistance to easy categorization made it something other.
He made a handful of landmark albums in that same era including Bo Diddley, Go Bo Diddley and Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger. Toward the end of the '60s, he also made some fiery blues recordings with Muddy Waters and Little Walter.
By the 1970s, performers were influenced by those influenced by Diddley, rather than by the guitarist himself.
He enjoyed a late-career rediscovery through a novelty appearance in Nike's Bo Knows campaign featuring athlete Bo Jackson.
It created a fresh awareness of Diddley, who was victim to poor management during his hot years. While he made his most influential recordings, Diddley was paid flat fees and didn't see royalties for his most important work.
His last recording was the A Man Amongst Men, released in 1997 and later nominated for a Grammy. He earned a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys in 1998.
Diddley was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
If you don't understand what all of the fuss is about the long and short of it is this; He brought rhythm to the forefront making Rock and Roll and we know possible. Additionally his rhythms became one of the cornerstones upon which Rock was built. So while by todays standards his early music may seem quaint previously there had been nothing like it under the sun. I hope that Bo Diddley receives in the afterlife the rewards he was so long denied in this life.
P.S. Mr Diddley while you're there could you put in a good word for Skip James?
PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup Poll Daily tracking finds Barack Obama with his largest advantage over Hillary Clinton in Democratic voters' nomination preferences thus far, 55% to 39%. Obama's previous largest lead was 11 percentage points, in May 15-17 and April 12-14 polling. His widening lead over Clinton has been evident in each of the last three days of tracking, after the two had been more closely matched earlier in the month.
Despite her growing deficit to Obama in the Democratic race, Clinton continues to poll slightly better than Obama in matchups for the general presidential election vs. John McCain. The latest tracking results, based on May 14-18 polling, shows Clinton with a 48% to 44% lead over McCain among registered voters nationwide, while Obama has just a 1-point edge (46% to 45%) over the likely Republican nominee. -- Jeff Jones
I'm curious as to whether or not the feuding between the Obama and Clinton camps has worked in McCain's favor. Obama previously enjoyed a much larger lead over McCain in the national polls. McCain has largely been doing an interesting mix of Town Hall meetings and appearing on TV shows occasionally popping up in the press to take a pot shots. It definitely appears that this strategy isn't hurting him at all. After all he's pretty good on TV for a politician ( despite being very blinky) and I give his sense of comedic timing good marks. Take this weekend for example:
With a month left in the Dem primaries anyone willing to bet that McCain is actually up a point or two in the national polls by their end at the rate the Dems are going?
Former Sen. John Edwards is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy Wednesday evening, in a dramatic attempt by the Obama campaign to answer concerns regarding Obama's appeal to working-class voters, several senior Democratic sources tell ABC News.
The Obama campaign confirms Edwards will endorse Obama at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan Wednesday. The event was originally scheduled to start at 7pmET, but was moved up to 6:20pmET, presumably to have the announcement make the evening news.
Edwards, who ran for president on a platform of eradicating poverty, plans to appear alongside Obama for the announcement. The event comes one day after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Obama by 41 points in the West Virginia primary, and Edwards' endorsement will give Obama a key establishment stamp of approval as he attempts to close out the nominating process.
While I'm sure that Obama appreciates the endorsement I don't think he's to happy about the timing of it. It would have benefited him more prior to the PA primary. The fact that Edwards waited to endorse until after after Obama had a lead in both pledged delegates and superdelegates just makes him look opportunistic. After all the vast majority of the race is over. That does however invalidate the rumor that Edwards was promised the AG position by Obama in return for his endorsement. At this point the Edwards endorsement may hasten the current exodus of of superdelegates fleeing Clinton's camp for Obama's banner. In that light if Edwards late endorsement allows the Dems to avoid a brokered convention it may prove to be worth its weight in gold if only to the DNC.
Today is the National Association of Letter Carriers' annual food drive. That means you can donate to your local food bank just by sticking a few edible odds and ends into a bag and putting them out by your mailbox. Its a great way to get rid of that commercially packaged fruitcake and that dusty old can of beets. Just make sure you beat the mailman to the mailbox.
By an impressive 10% margin. The problem is that she only picked up roughly a dozen pledged delegates. As the number crunchers point out she'd have to win by 80% in the remaining races to catch up to Obama. With Obama predicted to win Oregon and North Carolina thats not going to happen. That brings us to the real question:
My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.
We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.
"When John Kennedy thought of going to the moon, he didn't say no, it was too far, maybe we couldn't get there and shouldn't even try," he said.
"I am convinced we can reach our goals only if we are not petty when our cause is so great -- only if we find a way past the stale ideas and stalemate of our times -- only if we replace the politics of fear with the politics of hope -- and only if we have the courage to choose change. "Barack Obama is the one person running for president who can bring us that change. Barack Obama is the one person running for president who can be that change."
When you put both endorsements together they are huge symbolically. But I think that both backed Obama for different reasons. Aside from thumbing their nose at the Clinton wing of the party that is. Whereas Caroline Kennedy sees someone that can inspire and unite Teddy Kennedy also sees someone who harness substantive thought, hard work, and even compromise in order to help as many people as possible. As Kevin Sullivan puts it someone like him
In Obama, Kennedy no doubt sees the inspirational rhetoric and youthful energy of his brothers. But more importantly, Obama possesses a message that matches up to his own legislative record. A candidate who would govern the executive branch with a deliberative philosophy, Obama doesn’t resemble the lofty–and sadly, mostly unrealized–ambitions of Jack and Bobby, but rather, the more grounded and gritty ambitions held by Teddy himself. After eight years of what has been dubbed the “imperial presidency,” Barack Obama’s message of change, unity and progress obviously resonates with a legislator who has spent years clawing and compromising for bills he believed in.
Simply put Obama is left of center but he's smart, tactful, and pragmatic enough to know when to compromise in order to get at least get what results are possible done. So whereas Bill Clinton compromised because he had no choice (usually after a knock down drag out bout of mud slinging) Obama seems more likely to compromise to preserve good will and then try to get the rest through later. So rather then the continual partisan fighting of the Clinton era we'd be more likely to see constant give and take
Of course that strategy has its own difficulties. Because while Republican law makers have no choice but to compromise when they're in the minority many Dems resisting the move to post partisan politics. After all for many partisan warfare is all the know. However I'm also fairly certain that they'll wait until after Obama's approval rate slips below fifty percent. After all politician's don't eat their own until they can no longer ride their coat tails to reelection.
