► Keith slams Clinton for aiding and abetting the Republicans and warmonger, George W. McCain.

► Worse than Nader

You know, it was maddening when Nader said, "there's no difference between Bush and Gore," but at least he never-ever said the Republicans were better than the Democrats.

► Part I: Keith - "Clinton is NUTS !!"

► Some Sweeeeeeet Eye-Candy, Inside the Fold

I loved Michael Clayton.  Great performances by Clooney, Pollack and Swinton.  As a lawyer who served a few years in a big obnoxious firm like Clayton's, I found the milieu very convincing.  But I've been puzzled by one question since I saw it two weeks ago.  I can't justify billing a client or paying for Lexis for this, so I'm opening this up to our expert legal analysts.

SECOND SPOILER ALERT WARNING

The key to the movie is a report confirming that the defendant's product was indeed harmful.  If disclosed, the report would have been the "smoking gun" that led to billions in liability against the plaintiff.  The report was signed by certain higher-ups in the company, as well as its general counsel (at the time the Ken Howard character).  

Swiss Billionaire, Nicholas Hayek, announced yesterday that he chose George Clooney to sit the board of his new energy company, rather than Al Gore.

The company, which will develop environmentally friendly techniques for car motors, batteries and other devices, is aimed at reducing CO2-emissions in energy consumption, Hayek said in an interview with daily Berner Zeitung.

Now Clooney is a very good choice, but Al Gore would seem to the more logical selection, except for this:

"First I hesitated between Al Gore and Clooney," said Hayek. But he didn't chose Al Gore because it was still unclear whether he was running for presidency of the United States and therefore might have accepted the post as a mere public relations exercise, Hayek told the newspaper

And what about Hillary? On the jump.

I stumbled onto this on the internets and didn't see it diaried in the past few days

Clooney, DiCaprio to Make Howard Dean Movie

Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney are reported to be in early talks about teaming up for a movie, which The Hollywood Reporter is calling a "political thriller," loosely based on Howard Dean’s innovative but ultimately unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

Mr. DiCaprio is expected to play the young, idealistic communications director who guides an unconventional candidate but is ultimately derailed by dirty politics as usual.  So, that means the heartthrob is playing the screen version of Joe Trippi. (Kind of like Robert Redford playing Bob Woodward in "All the President’s Men.")

So, if you worked on the Dean Campaign in 2003-2004, I guess here's your chance to be in the movie.  

Lately, I haven’t felt much like writing. My Creative Muses who usually inspire my writing have been silent. The utter inconvenience of living in the Katrina-ravaged area gets to and exhausts me—and I’m among the lucky ones. Though my mother’s house was substantially destroyed, the frame of the house remained.  With tremendous thanks to my brothers, the inside was rebuilt, and we’re at least 90% back to pre-Katrina.

My mother never lived in a FEMA trailer. Truth be told, my mother’s name was put on the FEMA list and months later when we still hadn’t heard from Bush’s agency and one of my family members checked on it, FEMA couldn’t find her name.

Freshly back from China and Japan, where I was Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention.  An amazing experience which I will relate at http://www.davidbrin.blogspot.com/  ... later.

But first an alert.  If you have never watched the George Clooney movie THREE KINGS, see it tonight on FX.  Record it to show that "ostrich conservative" you've been working on.  Beneath the adventure movie is a very clear depiction of what George Bush Senior did to the Shiites of Iraq, back in 1991... the worst stain on American honor in our entire history, allowing Saddam to murder almost a million people who we had promised - in Bush Sr's own words! -- to liberate.

And these fools had the gall to claim we'd be greeted, in 2003, with "kisses and flowers"?

You would be hard pressed to find rightest diatribes more offensive than those from the likes of Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, or Glenn Beck, but I don't think I've ever heard as revolting or violent a tantrum as this one by a machine gun brandishing Ted Nugent:

Brought to you by...
News Corpse
The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.

Before I begin this next part in the ever-expanding blog-series about Bill O'Reilly's last book, it's come to pass that there has been a lot of 'attention' given to him in the past week.  Some funny, some rather extreme and some potentially damaging to what I ( and others ) feel DailyKos is about.  There's even been mention by several that it's time to stop discussing Bill O'Reilly all together.

True, i've only been here for a few months, but i can identify with a great many of the diaries presented here and feel that ( dispite claims by O'Reilly and others in the right-wing echo-chamber ) DailyKos provides a platform for socio-political discussion not seen anywhere else.

 
So, let's get back to what this series is about......

During the third Democratic presidential debate last night at Howard University, Hillary Clinton was asked what she would do to deal with the situation in Darfur. In all her wisdom, she suggesting setting up a no-fly zone and then offered the following quote:

“If they fly into it, we will shoot down their planes"

Candidates have been dancing around the issue of Darfur for years. It is clear to almost everyone in the world that there is a genocide occuring there. But does that mean the US needs to do anything about it? Aren't the same people who oppose the Bush "liberate the world" rhetoric the same people who advocate intervention in Darfur?

If the Democratic party were just a little more clever - inventive - they would realize that the answer to all of this Reagan worship is to create a Reagan of their own. If you build it, they will come. And if it can act, it will leave a mystique.

Come on - how easy would this be to pull off? Easy... and fun!

Done right, it could also be wildly entertaining, while politically feasible.

So, everyone may have thought Obamania would die down by now.

It seems to me it's just getting stronger.

Over this past week we have heard about the false allegations of Obama attending a Islamic fundamentalist elementary school as a child being raised in Indonesia. We heard it finally debunked by the "liberal media" after being reported as truth for over 24hours.

Then Al Gore get's a Oscar nomination and who does the Associated Press seek for comment, none other than you guessed it Barack Obama.

George Clooney was Friday's National Review Online scapegoat of the day. How NR editor Rich Lowry defends the Iraq war by smearing one of Hollywood's most conscientious figures and belittling the genocide in Darfur.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

I'm in with the in crowd;
I go where the in crowd goes
I'm in with the in crowd --
and I know what the in crowd knows
Anytime of the year, don't you hear?
Dressing fine, making time
We breeze up and down the street,
We get respect from the people we meet
They make way day or night...

I know, I've been out of the loop for so fucking long, this is probably OLD news to you all, but I just ran across it on YouTube...

... and the gob of self-pity I've been carrying around for what seems like weeks got yanked out of me like a cute, freshly washed little black puppy from a bin full of mud-soaked little grey ones...

George Clooney and other rights activists have just returned from a trip to China & Egypt, where they discussed the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan with government officials in each country.

What follows is a press release from Human Rights First, and the Save Darfur Coaltion...

MEDIA ADVISORY - FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15

SAVE DARFUR COALITION SUPPORTS CLOONEY-LED DELEGATION WITH EXPERT ANALYSIS, MATERIALS FOR MEDIA

Experts from the Save Darfur Coalition will be available for interview immediately following the George Clooney-led press conference at the United Nations on Friday, December 15. Save Darfur Coalition's Executive Director David Rubenstein and Ambassador (ret.) Lawrence Rossin traveled with and advised the high-profile delegation of celebrities and athletes who will return today from a human rights mission to China and Egypt to discuss the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region with senior government officials of both countries.

This effort might seem a bit bizarre, but the man behind it -- Blue Grass Report's Mark Nickolas -- is a legitimate political figure in the state. He ran Ben Chandler's successful congressional race in 2004 (the first real netroots candidate), and was instrumental in getting Ken Lucas to run in KY-04 (which while unsuccessful, also cost the GOP $6 million to defend).

Bluegrass Politics: ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ As Our Next U.S. Senator?
By Mark Nickolas (LEO)

With the 2006 elections barely behind us and the 2007 races coming together, let’s jump ahead to 2008. While most Kentuckians in November 2008 will be focused on the election of our 44th president, soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) will seek his fifth term, and only an optimist could imagine McConnell back in the majority, as Republicans defend 21 of 33 Senate seats in 2008.

Democrats would love nothing more than to retaliate against Republicans after they knocked off then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in 2004. But finding a viable Kentuckian with the stature and fund-raising ability to effectively challenge McConnell will be a tall order.

After surviving close elections in 1984 and ’90, McConnell put together a 12-point victory in 1996, then crushed Lois Combs Weinberg (D) by 30 points in 2002.

While there’s little doubt U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler (D) or Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson (D) could provide McConnell a top-shelf challenge, there’s little evidence either is interested. More likely, Democrats will hope a lesser-known challenger captures national attention and rides the wave to victory, as we saw this month when Jim Webb (D) knocked off Sen. George Allen (R-Va).

Well … there is one other possibility: Kentucky’s very own George Clooney.

Born in Lexington and raised in Northern Kentucky (note that McConnell is from Alabama), the two-time holder of the title “Sexiest Man Alive” (1997 and 2006) would present quite an opportunity for Democrats. Clooney, 45, is no stranger to politics; he even recently testified before the United Nations Security Council about his visit to Darfur, Sudan, where genocide is destroying the population. Clooney is as articulate as he is at ease when discussing issues like Iraq, North Korea, warrantless surveillance, domestic issues and why he’s a Democrat. He was even ahead of the curve this summer by calling for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to run for president in 2008.

While certainly a fixture of American pop culture, Clooney never fails to discuss growing up in Augusta, where he played baseball (and even tried out for the Cincinnati Reds), and in a recent Larry King Live interview, he spoke of the back-breaking work of cutting tobacco as a kid.

Clooney has never been shy about expressing interest in politics, though without fail he’s self-deprecating about why he should not run for office. In this month’s Esquire, Clooney mused that the effects of watching his father lose his 2004 race for Congress in Northern Kentucky, and the compromising nature of politics, have caused him to rethink a run. But it’s that very sort of thoughtful assessment — rather than an unabashed desire to be elected to office — that makes Clooney so appealing.

Celebrity actors running for high office is nothing new, as we’ve seen with President Ronald Reagan, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Sen. Fred Thompson, Rep. Sonny Bono and many others. Even Gopher from “The Love Boat” (Fred Grandy) served four terms in Congress.

Yeah, this would be awesome.

Progressive spokesperson and posterboy George Clooney reported today the death of his pet pig Max, who has been his friend and occasional bed warmer for more than 18 years.

Inside The Fold: The Full Sunday Lineup

(Video) That Clooney Charisma.

(Video) Steven Colbert Roasts MSM Turkey.

(Video) Jon Stewart: "Bush is Another F.D.R." (no, really!).

(Video) Girrrls Gone WILD - Argentina !!

(Video) I open the vaults and step into the music wars.  First up, The Pretenders: "Don’t Get Me Wrong" (Live on SNL in ’86).

(Video) Gwen Stefani: "Don’t Speak" (Live on SNL in ’96). Grrls ROCK!!

(Video) Worst Person in the World: Mort Kondracke.

(Video) Worst Person in the World: Mitt Romney.

(Slides) The World is a Beautiful Place.

(Video) SMACKDOWN – "The Criminal Presidency of George Bush."