First they organize a tea bagging of a speech by Al Gore, then they vandalize the venue. I wonder if Koch Industries $ paid for the spray paint?

Full Disclosure: While I am not involved with this speech, I do consult for the Alliance for Climate Protection

That just about sums up the Agricultural Industrial Complex's effort to take over the Ohio Constitution on Tuesday, so they can self-regulate, because, you know, it worked out so well on Wall Street and with Enron (to name 2 of, oh, a trillion examples)...

In any case, Facebook group here. Video below. Happy Monday all!

On November 3rd, there will be a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in Ohio. This is no ordinary ballot initiative. Its very existence and marketing has been bought and paid for--to the tune of millions of dollars-- by national and international agri-business corporations and their front groups, such as Pioneer Hi-Bred International (owned by DuPont and grantee of 100K to the effort),the National Pork Producers Council (113K), and the United Egg Producers (200K!).

(You can join the anti-Issue 2 Facebook Group and help us stop this underhanded effort)

Great video showing illegal sales that take place at gun shows, due to the gun-show loophole. Watch as one gun seller laughs when told the buyer couldn't pass a background check, and offers that he couldn't either. And you wonder how criminals get their hands on guns....

Last week, as you may know, the Thune Amendment was defeated. A group I work with, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, took on the task of defeating this inane legislation, which only had a chance of passing due to the extremism of the NRA/Birther crowd and the ever-present cowardice of the usual Blue-Dog Democrats.

I guess they weren't busy enough trying to destroy health-care reform or climate-change legislation, so jumping in with the NRA/Thune's misguided and cretinous attempt to override state laws trying to prevent criminals from enjoying the right to concealed carry seemed like a swell idea.

Roger Hickey has a great post at ourfuture.org on the "dangerous fraud" that is John McCain's healthcare plan. As I point out ad nauseam in The Real McCain, McCain's positions are not simply fraudulent. The "straight-talker" rarely limits himself to simple dishonesty.

First, read the email The McCain Campaign sent out today on this issue:

One would have to strain to be shocked that a racist ad is finding its way out of the bowels of conservativism in North Carolina. For political observers from the 1980s will remember that Senator Jesse Helms--an early sign of the shift of racially conservative whites in the South from their ancestral home in the Democratic Party to the GOP--was a master of using divisive tactics to undermine his African-American opponent for the U.S. Senate (not to mention white opponents such as Governor Jim Hunt, too).

Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, recalled this unsavory record upon Helms' retirement in 2002:

Many have already pored over the ins and outs of a Democratic debate tailor-made for "Enquiring minds" earlier this week on ABC. Well guess who just happens to be coming to dinner...or This Week, this weekend?

Why none other than John McCain!

So in the spirit of seeing how all the candidates deal with "scandal," or just being queried about everyone they have associated with since that 6th grade teacher who crossed the street against a red light (do you denounce her Senator Obama? Denounce and reject her!?! Or perhaps just reject?), here are some questions that John McCain should be asked on your show this weekend, Mr. Stephanopoulos (sorry, old habit from when I had you as a professor at Columbia).

Although, I guess I always have been one. But it is still good fun...

So I wrote a book. You know, because I had nothing better to do for those nine months. And because John McCain is more dangerous than Mel Gibson at a briss.

So, in any case, here is what U.S News & World Report had to say about the book:

A new book by liberal writer and political consultant Cliff Schecter lays out a detailed blueprint for how Dems can mine presumed GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's political and personal past—including already well-documented incidents of his temper—to defeat him in the fall.

And if you'd like to learn more about The Real McCain, please pick up a copy of my new book for the low-low price of $10.

Apparently some of the straight-talk released from The Real McCain yesterday got Rambo a bit peeved. So I'm glad I'm nowhere in his vicinity, because we know what happens to people when McCain gets a bit peeved at them.

He responded to the factual piece in my book about his calling his wife that four-letter c-word that wives so love to hear from their spouses, with this, according to today's New York Daily News:

McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker brands the book "trash journalism" and tells us, "The story is completely fabricated."

No surprise here. It's far from the first time the "maverick" has made himself into a liar, and today's opening statement to General Petaeus once again showed it won't be the last.

He brought out all the old favorites about those advocating for a "reckless and irresponsible withdrawal," (you know, only 70% of the country). The kind of withdrawal he advocated for in Beirut in 1983, and Somalia and Haiti in the 1990s. Hell he must have had a lot of white flags in storage then, he was waving them so so darn often! I get into his complete foreign-policy flip-flop over his career in much greater detail in my book that he has seen fit to disparage without even reading (c'mon, it's not like he's George W., he can in fact read above a My Pet Goat reading level, I assume).

Do you like making funny progressive videos in the comfort of your own home? Do you like to make them go viral? And most importantly, do you like money?

If all three of these answers were a yes, then go to Lunatics And Liars, where you can win up $10,000 in cash and prizes (including a $5K first prize) to mock Republicans in video form and acquire instant Internet fame...

P.S. I will be around these parts quite often in the near future folks. I am a bit embarassed by not having shown my face here since Sean-Paul made the big announcement of my joining the illustrious Agonist team. My excuse: I'm in the middle of edits on my first book, due out this May, called The Real McCain. Wanna guess what it's about?

Great stuff. First "Politics As Usual" and then "The Politics Of Hope":

More after the jump

A fantastic new book by my good friend Sarah Posner, that explains the "Prosperity Gospel," or right-wing preachers ditching the traditional concern for the poor among religious folk for talk of getting rich by being in good with the G-Man.

It is fascinating stuff, and will illuminate a lot of what you're probably already thinking about these hucksters.

Alternet has an excerpt up if you want to check it out.

And Chuck Norris knows all. He disemboweled scores of bad dudes in Oscar-worthy flicks such as the Missing In Action series, the Delta Forces and Invasion USA.

So if someone is not physically fit to do something, Chuck would know about it. But in fairness to McCain, hasn't anyone told Norris that being 147 years old is the new 98? Especially when it comes to how one refers to the finer sex, McCain's not reading from a 1950s playbook or anything. C'mon Chuck, be fair!

I'll be going on the international station conservatives love to hate--because they're not all pasty and Foxified--today between 5:05-5:20 Eastern Time (always subject to slight delay).

We'll be talking Nevada, South Carolina and all things presidential. If you'd like to check it out, here is a link to the live video stream.

Come one, come all!

A LOL funny video by master political satirist Lee Stranahan

At least according to the undecided viewers giving their opinion. In fact, he did well enough that one of the beltway heavies thinks he is going to win Nevada. Amazing, as I thought he wasn't worth talking about anymore, as practically no political reporter seems willing to utter his name.

Sam Seder does it again. He delves into the homoerotic Republican Ronald Reagan obsession, to see why they'd rather vote for a dead guy than the current crop of cooks.

To be fair, their candidates do suck, so their continuing lust for the Gipper does not explain all...

Michigan is the state that has been hit the hardest over the last decade by job losses and outsourcing to many wonderful free market economies. You know, like China.

Yet, so many Democrats have been so slow to comprehend how aligning themselves with big corporations, adding corporate advisors who play Democrats on tv and not responding to the economic anxieties Americans are feeling has hurt the party's image with working people and the middle class. In fact, it has provided an opening to populist sounding Republicans that should worry progressives.

I have written in the past about how Democrats could form a broad coalition with economically populist stances, that would speak to most people's daily reality, be true to our party's history and form the basis of an excellent political strategy. I now have seen it up close, as the state that is second to Michigan in terms of losing the kind of manufacturing jobs that used to pay real money and provide good benefits is Ohio (even though my part of Ohio is not one of the hardest hit, I take short road trips, and what you see is devastating).

Yet, too many Democrats--with some obvious exceptions-- have stuck with their watered-down, free-trade-under-all-circumstances, questioning healthcare for kids while giving CEOs of oil companies tax breaks mentality. This provides an opening to populist Republicans, like Mike Huckabee (seriously, even the upper middle class is getting pretty populist these days with hundreds of thousands of dollars in college costs, a mess of a healthcare sysytem, home values crashing, etc.).

And Huckabee, whether by conviction or political calculation, or perhaps both, is busting through the opening Democrats have provided. Want proof? Watch this ad, as he talks about people wanting a president "more like the guy they work alongside than the guy who laid them off" (take that Hair Product Romney!).

Democrats better get smart on these issues and quick. Or they may just find themselves outflanked. And not just politically, but morally, they would deserve it.

Yeah I seem to remember Ben Franklin saying exactly that...

You think anyone going to make Rudy explain this statement from 1994? Here some more of Rudy's enlightened philosophy:

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani discussed his philosophy of what freedom means in a democracy yesterday at a forum on urban crime, and his remarks left a civil libertarian puzzled and worried.

The Mayor, a former United States Attorney in Manhattan, said New Yorkers were inclined to "see only the oppressive side of authority."

"What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be," he said at the forum, sponsored by The New York Post. "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

The folks who are kind enough to pay me at Brave New Films have put together two videos in the last 24 hours (we work hard) for your perusal. First, Fox Attacks! Obama Staffer, starring Billo:

And please go sign our petition to tell Barack Obama to stand strong and avoid Fox!

You may have heard that Bill O'Reilly shoved an Obama staffer in New Hampshire and called him low class and an "SOB" for good measure. Don't fret, for I promise you no loofahs were harmed during this altercation.

Furthermore, I just watched the video (view below) of the actual event. Try and see if you can hear what I think I do. Which is Obama, while putting his hand on O'Reilly's shoulder, telling him he has "many people" to see and simply blowing him off.

You know how much this makes O'Reilly's falafel boil. Once again, it would be so excellent to see Fox reap what they've sown.