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Here’s a blog about Ohio’s 15th congressional district, where Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy is challenging Republican incumbent Deborah Pryce.

Via Crooks and Liars: Jesus Camp.

Worshipping to a picture of President Bush.

…

Pastor Becky Fisher: This means war! …

I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places.

Kid: You know a lot of people die for God and stuff and they’re not even afraid.

Girl: We’re kinda being trained to be warriors, only in a much funner way.

What a great idea. Let’s make America more like Pakistan and the Middle East, because things are going so well over there.

Six months from “Wanted Dead or Alive” to “I truly am not that concerned about him.” Earlier this year the CIA made plans to shut down their bin Laden unit.

And yet we’re supposed to believe the Republicans are the best team to fight the terrorists?

A few snippets from the new PBS program AIR: America’s Investigative Reports illustrate the difference between real reporting and the journalistic stenography that tries to pass as reporting:

Bryan Lonegan, Immigration Attorney:

He [NPR investigative reporter Daniel Zwerdling] didn’t believe anything I said until I proved it to him. If I said something happened, then I’d better be able to prove that, either with documents or a witness. And then, wouldn’t you know, he’d go back and check with that witness to make sure.

…

I deal with a lot of journalists. Invariably, they call me up; they say “I’m doing a story on XYZ, what do you think?” I give them three or four sentences of, you know, a sound bite or a nice pithy quote to put in a story, and then they call up the government and they get a counterpoint. And so you have point, counterpoint: Bryan Lonegan says this, the government says that. There’s your story.

Daniel Zwerdling, Reporter:

That doesn’t do anybody a service, because we’re all bombarded with different points of view that all have equal weight. Well, every point of view does not have equal weight. Lies should not get the same amount of weight as the truth.

Opinions are not facts. Facts are not opinions. Facts are susceptible to test and verification. But that’s a lot of work, and in the 24-hour news cycle, too many so-called reporters have decided it’s easier to treat facts and opinion as interchangeable.

No wonder the Bush administration ridicules the reality-based community.

If you’re having trouble with your PC and you call for help, one of the first suggestions you’re likely to hear is “reboot.”

Before I began my current life of leisure, I was a professional Computer Guy. I helped support big OpenVMS servers with hundreds of simultaneous users. When our systems were acting flakey, we couldn’t just reboot. Instead, we took a careful look at the status of the system. Memory low? Running out of disk space? Any processes hung up, or running wild? Network trouble?

Sometimes we could fix a problem with a quick command or two. Sometimes we discovered configuration tweaks or software patches to fix the root cause and prevent similar problems in the future. And sometimes we were forced to throw up our hands and simply reboot.

A simple reboot doesn’t actually fix anything. It wipes the current current state of things from your computer’s memory and tries to start fresh, but the fundamental defects that led to your troubles haven’t been fixed, and it’s usually only a matter of time before everything’s snarled up again.

At The Washington Monthly, a number of conservatives are saying it’s time to reboot the conservative movement — Time for us to go:

Christopher Buckley:

Six years of record deficits and profligate expansion of entitlement programs. Incompetent expansion, at that: The actual cost of the President’s Medicare drug benefit turned out, within months of being enacted, to be roughly one-third more than the stated price. Weren’t Republicans supposed to be the ones who were good at accounting?

Bruce Bartlett:

As a conservative who’s interested in the long-term health of both my country and the Republican Party, I have a suggestion for the GOP in 2006: lose. Handing over at least one house of Congress to the other side of the aisle for the next two years would probably be good for everyone. It will improve governance in the country, and it will increase the chances of GOP gains in 2008.

Joe Scarborough:

When The Washington Monthly reached me at my office recently, a voice on the other side of the line meekly asked if I would ever consider writing an article supporting the radical proposition that Republicans should get their brains beaten in this fall.

“Count me in!” was my chipper response. I also seem to remember muttering something about preferring an assortment of Bourbon Street hookers running the Southern Baptist Convention to having this lot of Republicans controlling America’s checkbook for the next two years.

William A. Niskanen:

Divided government is, curiously, less divisive. It’s also cheaper. The basic reason for this is simple: When one party proposes drastic or foolish measures, the other party can obstruct them. The United States prospers most when excesses are curbed, and, if the numbers from the past 50 years are any indication, divided government is what curbs them.

Bruce Fein:

The most conservative principle of the Founding Fathers was distrust of unchecked power. Centuries of experience substantiated that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Men are not angels. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition to avert abuses or tyranny. The Constitution embraced a separation of powers to keep the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in equilibrium. As Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.”

But a Republican Congress has done nothing to thwart President George W. Bush’s alarming usurpations of legislative prerogatives. Instead, it has largely functioned as an echo chamber of the White House.

Jeffrey Hart:

Today, the standard-bearer of “conservatism” in the United States is George W. Bush, a man who has taken the positions of an unshakable ideologue: on supply-side economics, on privatization, on Social Security, on the Terri Schiavo case, and, most disastrously, on Iraq. Never before has a United States president consistently adhered to beliefs so disconnected from actuality.

Richard Viguerie:

If Big Government Republicans behave so irresponsibly and betray the people who elected them, while we blindly, slavishly continue backing them, we establish that there is no price to pay for violating conservative principles.

In the Washington Post, Scarborough suggests that Republicans should just blame George W. Bush:

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?

Easy. Blame George W. Bush.

I can’t help thinking that what these guys want most is, before the 2008 elections, to wipe from the voters’ memory the fact that Republicans got us into this mess.

A simple reboot doesn’t actually fix anything. It’s not enough to put the Democrats into a position to share blame for the deeply screwed-up state of the nation. We’ve got to root out the fundamentally defective ideas that have got us into this state.

Via Bob Geiger: Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana responds to a Republican rant that “when it comes to securing America’s homeland, the Democrats are dangerously naive”:

I would like to state for the record that America is not tired of fighting terrorism. America is tired of the wrong-headed and bone-headed leadership of the Republican Party that has sent $6.5 billion a month to Iraq, when the front line was Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. That led this country to attack Saddam Hussein when we were attacked by Osama bin Laden. Who captured a man who did not attack the country and left loose a man that did.

Americans are tired of bone-headed Republican leadership that alienates our allies when we need them the most. And Americans are most certainly tired of leadership that, despite documented mistakes after mistake after mistake after mistake — even of their own party admitting mistakes — never admit that they ever do anything wrong. That is the kind of leadership Americans are tired of.

During the Clinton years, I got so very tired of that Fleetwood Mac song with the line, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” Aauuugghhh!

But now, I’m feeling nostalgic because of the current government’s mantra: “Don’t start thinking, period.”

When a reporter at Friday’s Rose Garden press conference said, “former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” George W. Bush responded:

If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic. I simply can’t accept that. It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective…

Let’s get this straight right now: We are good. Our opponents are evil. Case closed. Don’t even think about doubting it.

No, no, you can’t look at any particular thing we might have done and find it morally wanting. We’re good, they’re bad, case closed. Don’t you see? We are incapable of doing a wrong thing. Let’s move on.

No, you can’t argue that there are better ways to accomplish our objectives without surrendering the moral high ground. See, that opens up the whole concept that there’s a sort of continuum of morality, and that we’re somewhere on it, and so are our opponents — that’s it’s possible for us to be wrong. Nope, it’s a completely binary situation. You’re either for us, or you’re for the terrorists. Us good, them bad. We are incapable of doing better. Moving on…

No, you can’t say that we need to show high moral standards to win over people who don’t already agree with us. If you think that, you weren’t paying attention earlier when I said you’re for us or you’re for the terrorists. If somebody doesn’t get it that we’re good and our opponents are bad, it’s a wasted effort to persuade them. No, we just wipe ’em out. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Pow! Pow! Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Ka-boooom!

What you’re talking about is moral relativism, and I’m not buyin’ into that. Blam! Blam!

Don’t start thinking. It’s a slippery slope.

I got some mail from Mary Jo Kilroy’s congressional campaign. She’s challenging Deb Pryce, my congressional representative and the chair of the House Republican Conference.

Right away I noticed a difference between the two campaigns’ way of getting their message to me.

Deb Pryce:

Mary Jo Kilroy:

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says “the very character of the United States is changing, and not for the better.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Kennedy argued that the U.S. would never launch a Pearl Harbor-style first strike. But now, “not only does the U.S. launch an unprovoked invasion and occupation of a small nation — Iraq — but it does so in response to an attack inside the U.S. that the small nation had nothing to do with.”

Torture, once “beyond the pale,” is now one of our techniques in what George W. Bush calls “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.” In today’s column, Herbert asks who are we? (Emphasis mine):

The president put us on this path away from the better angels of our nature, and he has shown no inclination to turn back. Lately he has touted legislation to try terror suspects in a way that would make a mockery of the American ideals of justice and fairness. To get a sense of just how far out the administration’s approach has been, consider the comments of Brig. Gen. James Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines. Speaking at a Congressional hearing last week, he said no civilized country denies defendants the right to see the evidence against them. The United States, he said, “should not be the first.”

And Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative South Carolina Republican who is a former military judge, said, “It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them.”

How weird is it that this possibility could even be considered?

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We could benefit from looking in a mirror, and absorbing the shock of not recognizing what we’ve become.

If we are engaged in “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” I’d like us to be the good guys, please.

This ad opposing Senator George Allen (R – Virginia) by VoteVets.org is just stunning:

The Daily Show was off for the past two weeks. They returned Monday night, refreshed, full of fight, and knockin’ ’em out of the park. (One example at Crooks and Liars. Warning: strong language.) For fake news, they often do a much better job of getting to the heart of the issue than the so-called real news shows.

On Tuesday night, Gary Hart was on to promote his new book, The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats.

Jon Stewart: Are we at the point where someone needs to write a book telling Democrats what their convictions could be?

Hart: Yes.

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It’s not that difficult, because all we have to do is go back to the great presidents of the twentieth century, who were Democrats — Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson — and re-identify what they stood for, and what the Democratic Party stood for.

We were one nation, pursuing social justice. We believed in international alliances to make us secure. John Kennedy said we owed something to this country, and Lyndon Johnson restored equality and justice. And that’s all the Democratic Party needs to say, because all of those principles, those beliefs, are different from the Republican Party.

Tonight on The Daily Show, “Senior White House Correspondent” John Oliver tried to explain how the American people are simultaneously safe and not-safe. He assured us that the Bush Administration failed in response to Hurricane Katrina only because of a pre-8/29 mindset, and that those mistakes would not be repeated in a post-8/29 world. And he summed up by saying this:

George W. Bush is the right man to lead us in the era post whatever horrible calamity he leads us into next.

On Monday night, from the former site of the World Trade Center, Keith Olbermann talks about this hole in the ground, where thousands died, including four of his friends:

…[F]or me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft,”or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

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The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

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How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death,  after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections?  How dare you — or those around you — ever “spin” 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero, so, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

Crooks and Liars has video.

Update: Olbermann said on Thursday’s show that, by popular demand, the segment will be repeated on Friday night’s show. (If you’re interested, that’s Countdown on MSNBC, 8 PM EDT.)

Via Crooks and Liars: I don’t know how much confidence I have in Andrew Sullivan, a conservative columnist with a blog at time.com.

Next week, I’m informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove’s fall election strategy. He’s intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his “Hail Mary” move for November; it’s brutally exploitative of 9/11; it’s pure partisanship; and it’s designed to enable an untrammeled executive.

Hail Mary and to hell with America? That sounds just like Karl Rove. It sounds just like Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest of that rotten bunch.

Is it true? We shall see.

Via This Modern World, this looks interesting.

The propaganda that drew us into this war is now guaranteeing our defeat. The deception isn’t over. The deception is continuing.

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the United States defeated itself by believing its own spin. In military terms, it’s called “incestuous amplification.” It means believing your own propaganda.

More info at The Best War Ever. (This same video auto-plays over there, so you can skip playing the video here if you’re going to follow this link.)