I don't watch Hardball; Chris Matthews rubs me entirely the wrong way.

That being said, I didn't see Michelle Malkin on the Matthews MSNBC love-fest last night.

She was presumably on to talk about her new book, but the MSNBC producers asked her to do a segment on the Swift Boat controversy involving John Kerry and the new book Unfit For Command, which raises some legitimate concerns about John Kerry.

Matthews began to pepper Michelle in his usual bullying style, but Michelle wouldn't take the bait. When she mentioned a question raised about whether or not Kerry's wounds were self-infilcted, Matthews got defensive. When Michelle pointed out that the question was raised in the book, Matthews got even more defensive -- he hadn't read the book.

He tried again to bully Michelle, and when she wouldn't cower to Matthews' bluster, he ended the segment -- and by extension, her appearance. She didn't get to discuss her book at all.

And if all that weren't bad enough, Matthews had the classless gall to bad mouth her once she left. Then to pile the BS higher and deeper, Countdown host Keith Olbermann showed his ass and how he's entirely out of his depth outside of sports by continuing to pile onto Michelle in her absence.

Both Olbermann and Matthews used their blog entries to beat up on Michelle as well.

Of course, Michelle is a regular contributor for Fox News Channel and gets to appear on some of the highest rated news programs on cable. Olbermann and Matthews? Their collective audiences would fit inside a phone booth. OK, maybe two phone booths since MSNBC is carrying some Olympic coverage.

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Arabic news network Al Jazeera, shut out of coverage of the Democratic National Convention last month in Boston, won't have their signage eliminated at this month's Republican National Convention in New York.

"We're delighted and thrilled" the sign will be on display in Madison Square Garden, Al-Jazeera spokeswoman Stephanie Thomas said.

USA Today reported today, "Lenny Alcivar, the convention's media spokesman, said Al-Jazeera is being treated the same as other news networks who'll set up studios in the skyboxes."

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Retiring Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) will be giving the keynote speech at this month's Republican National Convention in New York.

Miller endorsed President Bush earlier this year, and had been previously announced as part of the Convention speaker's lineup.

In 1992, Miller gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention that propelled Bill Clinton to the Oval Office.

"In 1992, Senator Miller delivered the keynote address in the very same arena at the Democrats' convention," GOP chairman Ed Gillespie said in making the announcement. "We're honored he'll be taking the stage at the Garden this year for President Bush."

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Illinois GOP Senatorial candidate Alan Keyes refuses to back down on his reparations stance, even though he is ticking off his core constituency with it. The black and liberal audience he is pandering to with it, so far, seems to be seeing through it, which leaves the Maryland Republican out in the cold.

His voice rising to a yell, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Alan Keyes told a bipartisan civic group Wednesday he "will not budge" from his belief that descendants of slaves should be exempted from income taxes to help heal the wounds of past discrimination and segregation.

The former presidential candidate disdainfully brushed aside questions over whether his suggestion should apply to rich African Americans such as Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey.

Keyes continues to draw heat from conservatives nationwide (including this one) with his stance, insisting (among other things) that the position was not well thought out and would create a further antagonistic division of the races within the United States, this time based upon both financial as well as genological class.

With his voice becoming more shrill and loud, comparisons to former Presidential candidate Howard Dean make themselves apparent, and bring forth a question: "Is Keyes nearing his own 'Dean moment'?"

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Al Jazeera has released yet another video of a hostage kneeling in front of a trio of masked terroristic thugs.

The soon-to-be-victim this time is American photojournalist Micah Garen, a filmmaker who was in Iraq to film a documentary on the looting of archeological treasures in Iraq, according to his fiancée, Marie-Helene Carleton, in their New York apartment yesterday.

A group calling itself the Martyrs Brigade released the video to the Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera. It showed Garen kneeling in front of five hooded terrorists holding rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The militants gave U.S. forces 48 hours to pull out of the holy city (of Najaf) before they would execute Garen, who was snatched from a shop in Nassiriya on Friday along with his interpreter.

How long before we've had enough of this?

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Just damn.

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After this morning's Chicago Tribune article that showed Keyes appearing to support reparations all of a sudden, the Keyes camp issued a statement this afternoon to "clarify" his position.

I have also consistently maintained that the history of slavery, racial segregation and discrimination did real damage to black Americans, left real and persistent material wounds in need of healing.

In various ways through the generations since the end of slavery, America has tried to address this objective fact, but without real success. This was at least in part the rational for many elements of the Great Society programs of the sixties, and for the original and proper concept of affirmative action developed under Republican leadership during the Nixon years.

Unfortunately, the government-dominated approaches of the Great Society, which purported to heal and repair the legacy of historical damage, actually widened and deepened the wounds. They undermined the moral foundations of the black community and seriously corrupted the family structure and the incentives to work, savings, investment, and business ownership.

The idea I have often put forward to address this challenge involves a traditionally Republican, conservative and market-oriented approach: removing the tax burden from the black community for a generation or two in order to encourage business ownership, create jobs and support the development of strong economic foundations for working families.

This has the advantage of letting people help themselves, rather then pouring money into government bureaucracies that displace and discourage their own efforts. It takes no money from other citizens, while righting the historic imbalance that results from the truth that black slaves toiled for generations at a tax rate that was effectively 100 percent.

I have also made it clear that while I believe that the descendants of slaves would be helped by this period of tax relief, my firm goal and ultimate objective is to replace the income tax, and thereby free all Americans from this insidious form of tax slavery. It is well known that this is one of the key priorities of the Keyes campaign.

He's full of himself. Not only that, he waffles as bad as Kerry.

About the only thing that Keyes' plan would do is to drive an even larger class-based wedge between the races. And it's a far cry from his on-the-record 2002 position. Waffles, indeed.

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Yesterday, in response to a reporter's question in Chicago, Republican US Senate candidate Alan Keyes said that he supported a form of reparations (Chicago Tribune links require free registration or BugMeNot.com).

Prompted by a reporter's question, Keyes gave a brief tutorial on Roman history and said that in regard to reparations for slavery, the U.S. should do what the Romans did: "When a city had been devastated [in the Roman empire], for a certain length of time--a generation or two--they exempted the damaged city from taxation."

Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes--federal because slavery "was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment." In calling for the tax relief, Keyes appeared to be reaching out to capture the black vote, something that may prove difficult to do, particularly after his unwelcome reception at the Bud Billiken Day Parade Saturday.

The former ambassador said his plan would give African-Americans "a competitive edge in the labor market," because those exempted would be cheaper to hire than federal tax-paying employees and would "compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited."

Under Keyes' plan, African-Americans would still have to pay the Social Security tax, because "it's not a tax in the strict sense," said Keyes, calling it instead a payment to support a social insurance program.

In 2002 on his short-lived MSNBC show, "Alan Keyes is Making Sense," he argued with one of his guests, an advocate of reparations, asking, "You want to tell me that what they suffered can actually be repaired with money? You're going to do the same thing those slaveholders did, put a money price on something that can't possibly be quantified in that way."

And in a 2002 column titled "Paid in Blood," Keyes called lawsuits on behalf of slave descendants against large corporations an "effort to extort `reparations' for slavery from their fellow citizens" and said that "the truth of the Civil War is that the terrible price for American slavery has been paid, once for all," when Americans gave their lives on the battlefield to end slavery. "The price for the sin of slavery," Keyes wrote, "has already been paid, in blood."

It smells real fishy to me.

Michelle Malkin not only is as skeptical as I am, but she has a reparations calculator that shows how stupid the notion of reparations is.

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1 I just Paypalled you a few bucks. Lunch is on me. If Jesse and Al want reparations, feel free to vomit their share on them.

Posted by: Laurence Simon at August 17, 2004 07:16 AM (iE+3m)

2 Keyes is full of shit as far as it being cheaper to A-A under his plan... Employers do not pay any federal taxes on/for employees... So where would it be cheaper?

Posted by: Mudfish Billie at August 17, 2004 07:46 AM (S/EPF)

3 Wow !!!!! I am in agreement with Alan Keys !!!!! Yall Better Get Right !!! Yall better get Right !!! Seriously though, that is a great idea. Of course this doesn't solve the problem of how decide who will get the Reparations. Let's face facts. We all ain't as dark as Mr. Keys. And if you are talking about a exempting a generation or two (30 or 40 years) from income tax, their are bound to be phonies in the mix. I have not forgotten to what site I am posting. But you can not disagree that rteperations ARE warrented, and even promised, just never given. After all. How does a Nation say I am sorry to an entire people. There is only one way that matters. And that is with M-O-N-E-Y.

Posted by: BH at August 17, 2004 07:54 AM (Ki9Ww)

4 Heh. King, somebody better go get cha boy. I see this getting much worse before it gets better. He isn't the only one acting the fool. I talked about Vernon Robinson earlier today too: http://expertise.blogdrive.com/archive/98.html Things aren't looking too good right now.

Posted by: Expertise at August 17, 2004 08:10 AM (fyt6/)

5 Coming from a caucasion mid-twenties male, this may elicit some responses (as soon as a Caucasion opens their mouth to discuss this sort of subject, they are met with hostility) but as an avid subscriber to Playboy for almost 10 years now, I remember reading this article in Playboy a couple years back about the full page article by David Horowitz on his feelings about reparations....Read his post (also appeared in the Playboy issue) HERE Definitely brings up some good points.... Being in the Navy on a deployed missile cruiser meant that my time was spent with fellas of all races and backgrounds....I've got great friends of all races and colors and this particular article in Playboy got a very heated discussion going down in our berthing area.....As long as it can be discussed with an open enough mind to not scream "Racism" at one another, it results in a good conversation....The guys down in my berthing were, for the most part, open-minded enough to discuss this....Of course, there were several "lesser minds" that refused to listen to anyone's opinion (Caucasian OR African-American)....

Posted by: dmiller23462 at August 17, 2004 08:13 AM (GSdIn)

6 I agree - this smells of fish. I know how things go, when you start smelling things, Michael. I also agree with your Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. My post will go long, so I will address it on my blog.

Posted by: Joel (No Pundit Intended) at August 17, 2004 09:45 AM (iGAEH)

7 I have personally spent a long time thinking about reparations, and I think the plan of allowing blacks to be free from taxion is the best plan. I would also account for current racism where black workers trade at a discount. So if you are making 30k vs. the white guy 40K, your take home pay would be about the same if you didn't have to pay payroll and income taxes. And guess what it would cost your company 10k less so now there is a direct economic incentive to hire black.

Posted by: Scott at August 17, 2004 09:56 AM (s6c4t)

8 As a descendant of German immigrants that arrived in 1876, 11 years after the War of Northern Agression, I can safely say that Keyes is now an official nut-case in my book. Anyone who had ancestors that arrived post-unCivil War should be exempt. They owe nothing for slavery that they couldn't do anything about, and they owe nothing because their ancestors did not participate.

Posted by: David R. Block at August 17, 2004 10:08 AM (1Kq5G)

9 http://blacksforbush.blogspot.com/2004/08/alan-keyes-supports-form-of.html Fellow conservative brotherhood member is upset about Alan Keyes supporting reparations. I Think he has fallen into the classic falsehood that you can't combine conservative principles with social justice. Of course Alan would be against suing for reparations from corporations because it would be unjust to take their personal property for actions that were legal at the time they were committed. The fact that he believes two wrongs don't make a right doesn't mean he has to ignore the wrong that was done to black Americans by slavery and racism. He has obviously thought about it and came up with what is the most logical and just reparations plan that fits with his beliefs. Scott

Posted by: Scott at August 17, 2004 10:58 AM (s6c4t)

10 Michael, Off topic, it looks like you may have forgotten to close your italics tag on this post. The whole page below the second quote is in italics.

Posted by: Frog at August 17, 2004 12:08 PM (K+h36)

11 Well I'll be...

Posted by: DarkStar at August 17, 2004 12:39 PM (cnw1A)

12 Scott, I agree reparations for slavery would be a form of social justice, if it was going to people who had been enslaved or maybe even their children. But that's not who we are talking about today. There is no one walking around today who can honestly say they are where they are in life today because of slavery. Are we talking about social justice for slavery or retribution for the rampant violations of civil rights prior to 1964? Reparations solves nothing except to assuage the guilt of people who somehow, after several generations, feel guilty about something they had no part in. It's still an "Us and Them" proposition and must be resisted at all costs. We are ALL Americans and none of us deserve any more than any of the rest of us. Mr. Keyes has my deep respect for the wonderful things he has done to promote laws based upon morality in this country - that is where he should focus his campaign. He is wrong wrong wrong on reparations. I am still hoping that he has been misquoted somehow. I am shocked he has said something he's spoken against so much in the past. Regards, JG

Posted by: Joel (No Pundit Intended) at August 17, 2004 04:12 PM (/B92b)

13 Hey Mudfish Employers do not pay any federal taxes on/for employees... So where would it be cheaper? Thats not true.

Posted by: GeronL at August 17, 2004 06:04 PM (djSKN)

14 Geroni: What federal taxes do employers pay on employees? I'd really like to know. With the exception a really insignificant amount of F.U.T.A., there is nothing to give an employer a better deal to hire an African-Ameerican under the specs outlined.

Posted by: Mudfish Billie at August 17, 2004 06:18 PM (S/EPF)

15 Joel can I quote your comments on my blog. I would like to comment what i think are your general misconeptions of the effects of racism in the past and today. Scott blacksforbush.blogspot.com

Posted by: Scott at August 17, 2004 08:21 PM (s6c4t)

16 Scott, Certainly. Thanks for asking. I am always open to a potential educational experience.

Posted by: Joel (No Pundit Intended) at August 18, 2004 11:26 AM (iGAEH)

17 Here is something you may not know. Barack Obama, Keyes opponent does not support reparations. The Tuesday, August 17, 2004 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times said: "Obama said Monday he did not support reparations. Instead, he favored "investments" that would benefit all Americans who are struggling. "Things like early childhood education, job training, college scholarships, provide opportunity to all people," Obama said. "I'm just in favor of investments of people in need and struggling." I will bet anything in the world that the majority of Obama supporters were caught with pants down on that one. A mortar shell went off in the Obama camp, but you will not hear about it on the news. Many of Obama's people religiously support reparations. I guarantee that there are leaders of the reparations movement in Chicago who will ask Obama to explain himself, especially Alderman Dorothy Tillman. Actually this is a beautiful situation. The reparation people support a candidate who does not support reparations, and those same people lambast and ridicule "Uncle Tom" Alan Keyes who supports a form of reparations. Obama actually embarassed them, but do not expect them to tell us that.

Posted by: Robert at August 21, 2004 12:56 PM (PcgQk)

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In general, my chuch (Cascade United Methodist in Atlanta) has stayed away from politics (of course excepting the occasional "Jean Sixpack is a memmber here, who is running for Atlanta City Dog Catcher; please keep her in your prayers as they go into Election Day Tuesday."), but yesterday I almost walked out of the service.

One of the associate pastors was delivering the sermon, and she chose to make all sorts of veiled political assertions and accusations against the Bush Administration. I growled my best Klingon growl, and bit down on a retort. Rachel shifted a little uncomfortably as she noticed (she told me later) a number of other people squirming a bit in their pews.

I sat stone-faced through the remainder of her sermon, and came awful close to getting up and walking out.

But, as I've been told many times before, "...ain't no one monkey gonna stop the show..." I was not about to let her or anyone else stop me from worshipping the Lord, and I was not about to let anyone tell me that because my political ideology didn't follow theirs that I was 'not in God's favor,' to use a quote from her sermon.

This morning, LaShawn talks about a group of conservative Christians who are sending "spies" into churches to see if they advocate a particular political position or not. She also relates her experiences, which sounds like they are not too far from mine -- at least yesterday.

I grew up attending predominantly black churches, but I never noticed veiled political “preaching” until I attended a black church in D.C. I’d writhe in my seat (was I the only one?) as the preacher or guest speakers asked why Americans were “killing babies in Iraq” or that a “certain politician” was trying to turn back the clock on civil rights, etc.

The preacher never said, “Don’t vote for Bush” or “Put John Kerry in the White House", so should this be permissible? Or is freedom of speech an issue?

I was even treated to a “black” interpretation of Scripture. Ok, my excuse for even showing up at such a place was that I was looking for a new church, and until I found a good one, I attended the church closest to where I lived.

Since becoming a Christian, I’ve attended two conservative Reformed churches. Besides asking the congregation to “pray for our leaders", I never heard either pastor advocate a particular candidate, veiled or otherwise.

But don't beat me over the head because I choose to support a particular candidate or official! Don't parade candidates into the pulpit to speak during services! I don't go to church to be preached to about my politics, I go to hear the Word and to worship the Lord. As I said last week, leave the partisan politics outta the pulpit. Please.

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Need a soundtrack for today's strip? Try here!

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Is it just me, or does the Athens Olympic cauldron look, for all the world, like the world's largest cigarette?

Looks like an ad for Truth. I suppose anything would be better than those frazzlin' "Crazyworld" ads of theirs.

No matter.

Saturday, the competitions begin in earnest, no matter where you are, where you watch from, and where you read us from: Seven Network in Australia, BBC One and BBC Two in the UK, CBC and SRC in Canada, and the combined NBC Universal Networks here in the US.

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1 Actually Michael.. I think it's the world's largest doobie.

Posted by: frinklin at August 14, 2004 06:52 AM (7VjNn)

2 Right frinklin. I said blunt too. I think King did as well, but he just wanted to play up to sensibilities and say "cigarrette". Might offend some people.

Posted by: Expertise at August 14, 2004 07:32 AM (fyt6/)

3 I made the comment while watching it "rise to the heavens" that it went from looking like some sort of bizzare bridge out of the stadium to a smokestack. Good job, Greece. I wasn't too impressed with the other parts of the ceremony either- except for the giant floating sculpture. that was cool. a;sldkfj, CS

Posted by: curtis at August 14, 2004 08:28 AM (zLlne)

4 I thought it looked like Paul Bunyan's joint. The opening ceremony wasn't bad. The living statues were a great idea but the chick with the glow worm pregnancy made me start telling Rosemary's Baby and Alien jokes and the commentary by Costas was nearly unendurable.

Posted by: kimberley at August 14, 2004 04:32 PM (PcgQk)

5 Thanks, Michael. It has been MONTHS since I had a cigarette craving, but you had to go SCREW THAT UP for me, didn't you?? :-)

Posted by: Julie Anne Fidler at August 15, 2004 12:55 PM (AaBEz)

6 The Truth? They never seem to mention in their ads they are paid for by the tobacco settlement. I guess after they do the same thing to fast food we'll see TV ads featuring "force fed' people.

Posted by: GeronL at August 15, 2004 07:06 PM (Ek1BO)

7 Looks to me like the worlds largest one-eyed Olympian-devouring flaming needle being dropped on its next hapless victim by a pair of giant chopsticks. Errrrr...Yup...A doobie. *cough*

Posted by: Rtfm at August 17, 2004 07:37 PM (OtwUl)

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In what is becoming a nightmarishly regular occurance, the decapitation murder of an Egyptian man by AQ terrorists was shown on an AQ-associated web site today.

There was no way to verify the authenticity of the images, and there was no record that the man, identified on the Web site as Mohammed Fawzi Abdaal Mutwalli, had been kidnapped. The pictures are apparently stills from a video on the site that could not be accessed.

A second Web site, an English-language site that does not appear to have political links, carried the video of the beheading. Neither site gave a date for the killing.

Images (also of a graphic nature) can be found at My Pet Jawa.

So much for the notion of an Olympic truce.

These predators are no better than fire ants, and they need to be exterminated in the same fashion.

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Nearly a year ago, I blogged about a new "sports drink" (and I use the term loosely) called Pimp Juice. The drink is the brainchild of rapper Nelly, and has a taste that is closer to Skittles than to Red Bull, the market segment leader.

The larger issue, however, is the name, which like his chart-topping song of the same title, glorifies the pimp-and-whore prostitution subculture that objectifies women and promotes life along the edge of legality.

Ambra updates us on the response that Nelly has had to the backlash to the drink.

World Entertainment News Network reports that Nelly has put a spin on his infamous "Pimp Juice" song - and its new energy drink namesake - by offering a P.I.M.P. scholarship to disadvantaged students.

Dubbed the P.I.M.P. Scholars Program, (an acronym for Positive Intellectual Motivated Person), the scholarship will award one male and one female $5,000 each."

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I've said repeatedly that the Republican party needs to advertise it's message in black media. That it needs to get that message out to blacks in urban areas in order to get any sort of true outreach going toward the black mainstream in America.

Now that this is beginning to happen, you are seeing black liberals going up in smoke.

After all, they've had free reign to spoon-feed any story they want -- true or not -- about conservatives in black media for years. But that era is coming to an end. Conservatives have a right and a responsibility to speak up for themselves not only in the mainstream media, but in black media as well.

But to hear Al Sharpton and others tell it, we don't have that right.

"It's laughable that the Republicans would trot out these paid Negroes to try to cut into the 92% of African-Americans that tends to vote Democratic," said Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.)

"Bush cannot get away with this foolishness," Sharpton said. "It will backfire. It will turn around and energize people to beat George Bush."

"His wife says she's an African-American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies."

Sounds like Crazy Al is upset at the very idea of conservatives finally broaching black media with a conservative message.

Last I checked, that wasn't a bad thing; that is unless you have a desire to suppress the exchange of ideas.

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Blog sister of mine, LaShawn nudged me over to a new piece by freelance writer Dan LeRoy that showcases the Conservative Brotherhood (of which I'm proudly a member), along with black conservative bloggers in general.

Even among their limited audiences, however, these bloggers are providing black conservatives with something crucial that they often lack: ready access to other black conservatives. One reason celebrated figures like Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams can be derided as "tokens" and "sellouts" is because many people don't know the black conservatives in their own communities.

"They're out there, but I think there's an extent to which we've been told that if you disagree with the civil-rights industry that your blackness is somehow inauthentic," says Tooley, "and so we've been kind of isolated from each other." Blogging, he believes, is helping bridge those gaps.

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In comments released today, Catholic League president William Donohue responded to comments on the Catholicsforkerry04.org site that called President George W. Bush "The Anti-Christ."

“The home page of Catholics for Kerry 04 prominently lists comments by Wayne Madsden, who says, ‘George W. Bush’s blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs and his constant references to ‘evil doers,’ in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations—the anti-Christ.’ He also charges that Bush ‘couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult.’

“This is the language of a demagogue, and it has no legitimate role to play in presidential politics. It is important to note that it is not the position of the Catholic League that the Kerry camp should be held responsible for this group of wacko Catholics. But at the same time, it shows how hypocritical the operatives in the Kerry camp really are."

I call on Kerry and his team to denounce these comments as mean-spirited, antagonistic and just plain wrong. (not that I'm holding my breath or anything...)

As I mentioned when talking about Jesse Jackson's comments last week, neither party has any monopoly on The Bible or on religion. God loves all.

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A web site used by Al Qaeda-affiliated groups is now promoting a video of the decapitation of someone they claim is a CIA agent.

No orange jumpsuit, no advance demand of "get out or he dies" or anything else like that.

The four-minute long footage showed a Western-looking man sitting on a chair surrounded by armed masked men. One of the men struck the captive's neck repeatedly with a sword, severing his head amid shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).

A militant later held up the severed head for the camera.

An Arabic sign placed around the man's neck identified him as a "CIA agent." The video, which could not be immediately authenticated, showed what seemed to be the captive's picture identification card with the caption "visitor."

The Web site did not say which group issued the video, nor did the masked men identify themselves or make any political statements as previous kidnappers in Iraq had.

The men could be heard speaking in the background but the audio quality was too poor to understand.

The tired-looking captive was wearing a plain shirt and trousers.

In any event, the gruesome beheading murder of the as yet unidentified man is available on the web, with still photos at My Pet Jawa and the video available from Northeast Intelligence Network (WMP), and Slant Point. (warning, both links are extremely graphic)

I hope these monsters die horribly.

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As of the 2P ET update, Charlie has become a Category 1 hurricane.

Hurricane Charlie has max sustained winds of 75 MPH. Currently it is 90 miles south of Kingston, Jamaica. It is moving to the West-Northwest at 18 MPH.

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ABC News' political unit produces a daily newsletter called "The Note," which today makes an idiotic claim.

Forget the fact that that we still can't find a single American who voted for Al Gore in 2000 who is planning to vote for George Bush in 2004. (If you are that elusive figure, e-mail us and tell us who you are and why: politicalunit@abcnews.com.)

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."

It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

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Tropical Storm Warnings and Hurricane Watches are up along the Florida Panhandle as Tropical Storms Bonnie and Charlie bear down on the Gulf Coast.

As of the 11 AM ET update, TS Bonnie has max winds of 50 MPH is about 235 miles SSW of the mouth of the Mississippi River, moving NNE at 6 MPH. The National Hurricane Center expects Bonnie to gain strength and pick up speed over the next 24 hours. Landfall is expected tomorrow afternoon along the Florida panhandle.

TS Charlie is just short of hurricane strength, and expected to become a hurricane later this afternoon. Charlie is in the Caribbean 175 miles SSE of Kingston, Jamaica, and moving WNW at 18 MPH. Hurricane Warnings are up in Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and the western portion of Cuba. With Charlie being expected to turn to the north soon, a Hurricane Watch is along the western coast of Florida from the Keys and Dry Tortugas northward.

Charlie is expected to make landfall along the west coast of Florida near Tampa Friday evening.

Hurricane City, one of the more comprehensive storm-watching sites on the web, is set to begin streaming live content later this afternoon.

Posted by: mhking at 07:43 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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