Hot Potato Mash

Mike Huckabee Is 'Chuck Norris Approved'

Presidential candidate commercials do not get much better than this.

(h/t Veracifier)

MUST SEE NEW SITE: Fox News Porn!

So the video above is cute but the new Robert Greenwald/Brave New Films parody site, Fox News Porn, is fantastic.

VIDEO: 20 Minutes Of Pure Inspiration, Optimism and Excitement

Hillary may be the better debater and Edwards may have the better policies but no one can deliver a speech like Barack Obama did at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Iowa on November 10, 2007.

VIDEOS: Bill O'Reilly Targets Mark Cuban In Latest Joseph McCarthy Act

Who needs Joseph McCarthy when you have Bill O'Reilly? O'Reilly's latest and greatest victim is Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban who, according to O'Reilly, should be imprisoned.

The original attack came Monday night, undoubtedly because Mark Cuban called the demagogue a “moron” in response to a Brad Friedman question at BlogWorld last week.

A mashup (5:08) of O'Reilly's attacks on Cuban on Tuesday.

Keith Olbermann puts the O'Reilly smears in context.

KO interviews conservative constitutional lawyer, Bruce Fein, about the legal b.s. being spewed by Bill-O.

UPDATE: O'REILLY ATTACKS CUBAN FOR THIRD STRAIGHT DAY

O'Reilly brings Dennis Miller into the ring to further his attacks on Mark Cuban.

MSNBC's Dan Abrams smacks O'Reilly good in just a half a minute (0:41).

UPDATE 2: KO KO's Fox 'News' and O'reilly

Brad has more.

VIDEO: CNN's Jack Cafferty Says Fred Thompson's Presidential Campaign Is 'Going Nowhere'

CNN's Jack Cafferty states what anyone who has watched Fred Thompson on the campaign trail already knows. Still, it's pretty funny

Fox Attacks Decency

Robert Greenwald's, Fox Attacks Decency... with Bill O'Reilly Leading the Way.

The Pervert Factor Mashup - I made 10 months ago with video culled from two days (3/22 & 3/23) of the O'Reilly Factor.

2007 BEST VIDEO BLOG FINALIST

Wow! While it is truly an honor to be a finalist for Best Video Blog, will someone please throw some sympathy votes my way. I'd love to top 0.3% of the vote (see below) before all is said and done. Where is Diebold when you need them?

And while your voting (once a day per the rules!), might I suggest casting a vote for the hilarious conservative blogger, Jon Swift, who was nominated for Funniest Blog for the umpteenth time.

NY Times Editorial: In Defense Of Voting Rights

The NY Times calls for the firing of John Tanner, the chief of the Justice Department's voting section, because of the “offensive” and “bigoted” comments he made at the National Latino Congreso which I captured on video and  posted at The Brad Blog:

A House Judiciary subcommittee was the site of a sad spectacle the other day: John Tanner, who heads the Justice Department’s voting section, trying to explain offensive, bigoted comments he made about minority voters. It was a shameful moment that crystallized the need for immediate steps to fight for the rights that Mr. Tanner has been working so hard to undermine.

The administration should, of course, fire Mr. Tanner. Congress should pass a bill to criminalize deceptive campaign practices. And it should reject a pending nominee to the Federal Election Commission, Hans von Spakovsky.

The Justice Department has a long history of protecting the voting rights of minorities. In the Bush administration, the department’s voting rights section has been taken over by ideologues most interested in denying the ballot to minorities, poor people and other groups likely to vote Democratic.

The original video:

VIDEO INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE: Peace Activist Start Loving

Start Loving is a peaces activist and humanitarian who finds the spread of empire through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq immoral. As such, he feels a duty to wake the conscience of the American people. And in an effort to draw more attention to his cause, Start Loving is now camping out 24/7 in front of the House Office Buildings across the street from the Capitol. When I interviewed him on October 22, 2007, Start Loving was three weeks into a hunger strike.

Part 1 (1:49)

Start Loving: “There needs to be a shift on Capitol Hill from a focus on stuff to a focus on people. We in these Houses [Congress] couldn't really care less about the 50,000 lives of our children of the United States that have been destroyed in Iraq so far. I mean some tiny sliver of each of the Congressmen cares but it is certainly not at the forefront of their minds and that's a crime of humanity. The two million people in Iraq that have been killed, before the war and after the war, should be central to our agenda -- figuring out how to ameliorate that, but it's sideline. So, I'm here to be a vote that our priorities need to shift from stuff, careers, corporate profits to a focus on what's priceless which is human life.”

Part 2 (4:54)

Start Loving: The third unmentioned party is the group that I think are the true patriots of this country, the men and women in uniform, that have been brainwashed into thinking that they're fighting for freedom and democracy in Iran and all they are fighting for are corporate profits for Cheney, Bush and their cronies. My proof of that is who would doubt that if people on Capitol Hill, to keep the war going, had to send their children to the war, it would stop in a nanosecond. Or, the other proof, I think, most people would agree if they thought about it, if the war corporations were told they could continue supplying armaments but there would be no profit - all their profit would be stopped - it would stop in a heartbeat. This is not a patriotic war, this is a war of profit and greed.“

Part 3 (3:09)

Why does Congress care so little about our troops in Iraq?

Start Loving: ”Whereas nobody understands the phenomenon exactly, it's fair to say the human being can become intoxicated on things other than substances. That the spirit of empire, the spirit of power, the sense of power, the sense of power over others, is tremendously intoxicating and like any intoxication it changes your mind. It disables certain parts of your nervous system and empowers other parts. It disables conscience, humanity, heart, compassion and it empowers self-engrandizement, and lust, and desire for more more more. It really dehumanizes us, the spirit that dehumanizes us. Our culture is optimized for that because that is how you get people to buy stuff, by ignoring people in need benignly, of course, thinking that we are great people. But, in fact, ignoring people in need and more and more looking out for me and hiding behind the rationale that I'm taking care of my biological children. But that's really just license to ignore everybody else.

And it took me a long time to understand this about people like Dr. King. He was always as pained about the agony of the oppressor as of the oppressed. And if they ever woke up, he seemed to think and realize, to their inhumanity, they would be horrified and they would never want to be that way. Well, that's how I think it is with Congress.“

Part 4 (1:58)

Why haven't the American people galvanized to put a stop to the Iraq war?

Start Loving: ”The analogy of how fire starts. It starts with a match but it can become a huge blaze. And to start that blaze you need dry wood. I think that the American populous may be going from being really wet wood, just totally in the grip of empire and selfishness, may be drying out a little bit. With the issues that are confronting them.“

Part 5 (3:05)

Would you label yourself an optimist or a pessimist?

Start Loving: ”Facing the truth of your current situation, and if it's a horrible truth facing that squarely, and at the same time developing a vision of how things should be and need to be. And if you can hold both of those within you, it is the ultimate release of energy, and power, courage, commitment.

I neither try to see things worse than they are or better. I want to see the truth of how they are so that I can mobilize myself appropriately. And it's a horrible phenomenon, I was just talking to my friend Rick about how I used to be a devotee of NPR, I can barely stand listening to them anymore. The poor guys have been destroyed by right wing elements I think. But all they want to talk about is pablum and they want to talk everything in cheery voices and how nice everything is... Well, it's not nice. Half the world is living on a dollar day. People in Palestine have been in basically concentration camp conditions for thirty-forty years. Four million people killed in Congo so that we can have cheap electronic parts. You know, Haiti, just a horror. And on and on and on and on. I don't suspect I come across as being depressive. I'm not, I'm very much alive. And that life comes from this needn't be, this shouldn't be. And I want to pay whatever price I can with my life to wake us up. Because none of us want it to be this way. None of us, if we could be awakened from our inhumanity.“

Part 6 (5:41)

What is the significance of the three crosses on your head?

Start Loving: ”The cross in the middle is the name I've adopted because nothing else I could call myself is relevant, which is 'Start Loving'. And the two on either side are 'stop starving' - and it's the active verb - it's starving others of AIDs drugs, of education, I mean, how do we have our military today? We starve these poor and middle class children of the opportunity to go to college, of decent education, so that there only option to climb is to go into the military. We've starved people around the world of AIDs drugs and other basic resources. And when that doesn't work we kill them. So the other one says 'stop killing.'“

Part 7 (1:47)

How long will you continue with the hunger strike?

Start Loving: ”Things will only change in this country when the populous stands up. If there is an honest history in the future, if we have a future, it will not blame congress and it will not blame Bush and Cheney for what's going on. It will blame the American people for being so apathetic at such a horrible time of need.“

VIDEO INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE: Scott Gant, Author Of 'We're All Journalists Now'

Cross-posted at BRAD BLOG

Are bloggers journalists? More importantly, should bloggers receive the same privileges the government bestows upon “professional” journalists including, in most states, protection from the forced disclosure of confidential sources of information by way of shield laws?

These are some of the questions congress has been considering over the last month as part of the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2007” and which BRAD BLOG, which often relies on confidential and whistleblower sources, has been tracking closely.

With this backdrop, BRAD BLOG jumped at the opportunity to interview the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject -- D.C. constitutional law attorney Scott Gant. Released in June, “We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age” (Scott Gant), has enjoyed favorable reviews and led to appearances by Gant on BookTV and  on The McLaughlin Group, where the host commented that the book was “a great read, an easy read and it breaks new ground, quite groundbreaking.”

Part 1 (7:32) of the interview above covers all things related to the shield law.

 

Part 2 (8:30) of the interview above concentrates on access privileges and other benefits that journalists receive from the government that may be important to bloggers.

“We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age” (Scott Gant)