95% Dennis Kucinich 93% Mike Gravel 87% John Edwards 84% Chris Dodd 84% Barack Obama 80% Hillary Clinton 77% Joe Biden 77% Bill Richardson 35% Rudy Giuliani 25% John McCain 21% Ron Paul 20% Mike Huckabee 18% Tom Tancredo 17% Mitt Romney 10% Fred Thompson
Many of us are familiar with the Political Compass. Some at MLN even had their compass score in their signatures for a while, and even took the time to chart some of their own personal scores in March. But do you know where the 2008 Presidential Candidates sit on this political chart?
Perhaps you've heard of the Political Compass website, where you can take a test that places you on a grid based on the degree to which you are "left" or "right" on the economic scale as well as how socially libertarian or authoritarian you are.
I'm damn near as moonbatty as it gets: -6.50, -6.67, which puts me in, for lack of a better term, the "deep Southwest" of the grid.
Anyway, thanks to a recent article on London's TimesOnline, we can see how the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates fit on the grid.
This should worry those on the left, and I know that many at MLN scored even further left than I did (I am a Liberal, but I am a moderate Liberal), as they watch the next candidate chosen for the Democratic party who is nothing less than a conservative. That is, if they chose anyone other than Kucinich or Gravel. And right now they aren't even counted in the top 3 contenders.
This is where the Democratic party is failing miserably. They are not really providing any different ideology than the GOP, just a moderate version of it, if they choose any of those conservative candidates on that chart.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden... They are all conservatives, as moderate as some of them may be, they are conservatives nonetheless.
These tests often elicit surprising responses from people:
If you are a fan of Goodbye Cruel World (GBCW) diaries you can't do much better than reading RedState founder Thomas Crown's rambling masterpiece where he tells the GOP presidential contenders to 'go Cheney themselves' and also insults many of our friends.
You all have no idea how long I've wanted to write this. For the reasons set forth in my next diary, I can, and am; but I've been saving this up for a while. Pardon the spleen.
Dear Senators Thompson and McCain; Governors Romney and Huckabee; and Mayor Giuliani: You all suck.
Read on to see why. Or don't; I figure only two of you are smart enough to care why a conservative, Mass-going Catholic would personally drive the buggy to take you all to Hell.
Before I go any further, to any outraged supporters of any of these candidates: Toss it. So many of you have spent so much time shilling for your preferred choices, you've lost track of first principles. I have no time for far too many of you, and those of you with the brainpower to actually merit notice have picked the wrong company in which to travel."
Tell us how you really feel about how the "Great and Failed Republican Experiment" got you to where you are now? No... We know you won't admit that part, but that is the horseyou all rode in on,then rotate.
Journalist and author Greg Palast alleged that Griffin was involved in an effort to target 70,000 voters - students, deployed military personnel and homeless people in predominantly African American and Democratic areas for vote caging during the 2004 election Griffin.[3][4]. Monica Goodling cited in her oral and written testimony to the U.S. House Commitee on the Judiciary on May 23, 2007 that Griffin's alleged vote caging activities were desirable for Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to be informed of, in relation to Griffin's potential Senate confirmation as a U.S. attorney.[5]
snip
On March 14, 2007 the Arkansas Leader wrote about Griffin his "resignation or dismissal ought to be imminent".[15] Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified in his January 18, 2007 appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee:[7] "I am fully committed, as the administration's fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed United States attorney."[7] On May 30, 2007, Greg Palast turned over a series of 500 emails — potential evidence of a crime — by request from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers; that were inadvertently sent to the wrong email address, by Griffin. [1]
Karl Rove-protege Tim Griffin recently stepped down as U.S. attorney in Arkansas, realizing that his nomination would almost certainly be rejected by the Senate.
Griffin’s tenure was especially controversial because as former Research Director for the Republican National Committee in 2004, he allegedly engaged in the voter suppression of African-American servicemembers through a tactic known as “caging,” which is both illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act and unconstitutional.
At a speech at the University of Arkansas this week, a teary-eyed Tim Griffin defended his record. Like former Justice official Monica Goodling — who called caging just “a direct-mail term — Griffin attempted to dismiss the allegations. He laid the blame on the “Internet stuff” and made jokes comparing caging to tending zoo animals:
Obviously, I’ve seen the Internet stuff about caging. First of all, the allegations that are on the Internet and have spread through the tabloids are completely and absolutely false, number one. And ridiculous. Caging, as you may know, I had it looked up, is a direct-mail term for basically organizing returned mail. … And I’ll just say that it’s so untrue. … This is all made up and faux pas. I didn’t cage votes, I didn’t cage mail, I didn’t cage animals, I’m not a zookeeper.
Griffin dismissed the accusations but provided no evidence to support his claims, downplaying the severity of caging. But the allegations against Griffin are serious enough that Goodling briefed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty on them before he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Wall Street Journalreports (sub. req.) that Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who became one of the most controversial figures in the U.S. attorney firing scandal, is in talks with Fred Thompson's presidential campaign:
Backers look for Fred Thompson to use a June 2 speech to Virginia Republicans to step closer toward the race. Thompson allies have had discussions with Tim Griffin, the Arkansas U.S. attorney and Rove protégé, about taking a top job with the campaign.
Griffin, of course, was installed as the U.S. attorney for Little Rock last year. Emails from Kyle Sampson have shown that the Justice Department and White House were plotting to use a little noticed provision in the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization Bill to keep Griffin in place throughout Bush's term without the need for Senate confirmation. Alberto Gonzales has somewhat unconvincinglydisavowed the plan.
All of this is may seem like small potatoes, as far as Griffin's involvement in the GONEzales saga, but there are likely more important reasons why Griffin is leaving his government job. In light of the politicization of DoJ and USAs by the bush administration, old stories of Tim Griffin's involvement in "CAGING" (illegally purging voter rolls) suddenly start to look like blockbuster stories to the average American:
Greg Palast exposes true intent, cover up and criminal acts of Bush administration's US Attorney scandal. In summary, it's about wrongfully charging Democrats with made up crimes in order to influence the outcome of elections. In other words, it's about stealing elections or subverting our democracy. Just more evidence of the Bush administration's stated goal of turning America into a one-party state. Which comes pretty close to meeting the definition of treason.
Did he say treason? SNAP! I thought he said that...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
It should get interesting as Palast will now turn over to Conyers the many RNC Emails that they accidentally sent to him.
Yep, those incriminating Tim Griffin Emails. Tim Griffin is nothing more than a mini-me version of Karl Rove with a law degree. And thompson wants this piece of Republican junk to work on his campaign? It should be interesting as Fred Thompson tries to explain why one of his campaign workers might be found guilty of taking away Black soldiers right to vote in 2004.
Go ahead and run Thompson. We're just getting ready for you over here with a nice warm welcome to reality... Expect lot's more of this as you continue to open your big gaping piehole along the way.
As you may recall, for some inexplicable reason, the CIA sent the husband of one of its employees to Niger on a sensitive mission. She had suggested it. He came back to the U.S. and proceeded to publicly blast the administration. Naturally, everyone wanted to know "who is this guy?" and "why was he sent to Niger?" Just as naturally, the fact that he was married to Valerie Plame at the CIA was leaked.
Having virtually guaranteed that Ms. Plame's identity would be ultimately disclosed by using her, shall we say, "politically active" husband, the CIA then demanded that this leak of her name be investigated by the Justice Department for a possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
The Justice Department, bowing to political and media pressure, appointed a Special Counsel to investigate the leak and promised that the Justice Department would exercise no supervision over him whatsoever -- a status even the Attorney General does not have.
The only problem with this little scenario was that there was no violation of the law, by anyone, and everybody -- the CIA, the Justice Department and the Special Counsel knew it. Ms. Plame was not a "covered person" under the statute and it was obvious from the outset.
Furthermore, Justice and the Special Counsel knew who leaked Plames's name and it wasn't Scooter Libby. But the Beltway machinery was well oiled and geared up so the Special Counsel spent the next two years moving heaven and earth to come up with something, anything. Finally he came up with some inconsistent recollections by Scooter Libby, who had been up to his ears studying National Intelligence Estimates. But he worked for Dick Cheney, so that apparently was enough for the special counsel.
I didn't know Scooter Libby, but I did know something about this intersection of law, politics, special counsels and intelligence. And it was obvious to me that what was happening was not right. So I called him to see what I could do to help, and along the way we became friends. You know the rest of the story: a D.C. jury convicted him.
Removing any doubt about the status of Valerie Plame when Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Armitage started leaking her name out to the press, the CIA releases an unclassified summary of her employment history:
An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.
The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.
Click on images for a lager view (Images taken from original PDF)
Just trying to make it easy reading for those of you that might hate PDFs as much as I do!
Dan Froomkin spells it out for those of you that don't understand how serious the leak of Valerie Plame's identity by Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Armitage is:
In Friday's eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution "unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics." In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby's crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.
Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions."
It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."
The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." (My italics.)
Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President." (My italics.)
Two suggestions:
Scooter Libby should buy a few years supply of "soap on a rope"
cheney should put a fresh battery in his pacemaker.
It's going to be a rough ride for both of them.
If you like rough rides than Libby is your man, Freddy m'boy! About the only thing Thompson got right in his speech to the Council for National Policy was the fact that he and Libby are friends. But Thompson takes his Libby loving a little more seriously than many of the other 2008 GOP candidates that are doomed to failure.
Former Senator Fred Thompson, a member of the Advisory Committee for the Libby Legal Defense Trust has graciously offered to host another fundraiser for the Libby Legal Defense Trust. We will be providing additional details in the coming days.
That little quote above is straight off of the front page of Libby's official "Defend the Traitor" page. There is little wonder why this little nugget buried in Dan Froomkin's Libby article the other day about Plameologist extrordinaire Marcy Wheeler might become relavent as people start looking for a better picture of 2008 candidates:
Nexthurrah blogger Marcy Wheeler blogs at the Guardian about how Libby's "defense team solicited his friends and associates to write letters to the judge arguing that Libby deserves a reduced sentence. Last Friday, Libby's lawyer Bill Jeffress submitted a filing opposing the release of those letters to the public. In it, he writes: 'Given the extraordinary media scrutiny here, if any case presents the possibility that these letters, once released, would be published on the internet and their authors discussed, even mocked, by bloggers, it is this case.' "
Concludes Wheeler: "Jeffress' invocation of bloggers is a cheap attempt to dismiss precisely what bloggers bring: an appropriate scrutiny of the motivations and actions of those who lied us into war and outed Valerie Plame."
The Wall Street Journalreports (sub. req.) that Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who became one of the most controversial figures in the U.S. attorney firing scandal, is in talks with Fred Thompson's presidential campaign:
Backers look for Fred Thompson to use a June 2 speech to Virginia Republicans to step closer toward the race. Thompson allies have had discussions with Tim Griffin, the Arkansas U.S. attorney and Rove protégé, about taking a top job with the campaign.
Griffin, of course, was installed as the U.S. attorney for Little Rock last year. Emails from Kyle Sampson have shown that the Justice Department and White House were plotting to use a little noticed provision in the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization Bill to keep Griffin in place throughout Bush's term without the need for Senate confirmation. Alberto Gonzales has somewhat unconvincinglydisavowed the plan.
All of this is may seem like small potatoes, as far as Griffin's involvement in the GONEzales saga, but there are likely more important reasons why Griffin is leaving his government job. In light of the politicization of DoJ and USAs by the bush administration, old stories of Tim Griffin's involvement in "CAGING" (illegally purging voter rolls) suddenly start to look like blockbuster stories to the average American:
Greg Palast exposes true intent, cover up and criminal acts of Bush administration's US Attorney scandal. In summary, it's about wrongfully charging Democrats with made up crimes in order to influence the outcome of elections. In other words, it's about stealing elections or subverting our democracy. Just more evidence of the Bush administration's stated goal of turning America into a one-party state. Which comes pretty close to meeting the definition of treason.
Did he say treason? SNAP! I thought he said that...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
It should get interesting as Palast will now turn over to Conyers the many RNC Emails that they accidentally sent to him.
Yep, those incriminating Tim Griffin Emails. Tim Griffin is nothing more than a mini-me version of Karl Rove with a law degree. And thompson wants this piece of Republican junk to work on his campaign? It should be interesting as Fred Thompson tries to explain why one of his campaign workers might be found guilty of taking away Black soldiers right to vote in 2004.
Go ahead and run Thompson. We're just getting ready for you over here with a nice warm welcome to reality... Expect lot's more of this as you continue to open your big gaping piehole along the way.
95% Dennis Kucinich
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