The constant theme last night in the coverage of the Berlin speech that Obama delivered was the refrain: "We'll see what the voters think"....   GREAT News, VOTERS LOVED IT!

Over half of Americans (55%) rate Barack Obama’s historic speech in Berlin yesterday good or excellent, and the Democratic presidential candidate is experiencing a modest bounce over John McCain nationally in the latest Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Even nearly a third of Republicans (32%) give the speech good or excellent marks, but Democrats are far more enthusiastic, with 75% feeling that way. However, 39% of Republicans rate the speech Poor versus only five percent (5%) of Democrats. Forty-seven percent (47%) of unaffiliated voters say the speech was good or excellent, while 16% characterize it as Poor.

Suck on that David Brooks!!!  This is EXACTLY what McCain feared....

Life forces lessons upon us, some of them we would rather not have learned. The term A-Fib or Arterial/Atrial Fibrillation is one I could gone without learning on a personal level. This week I'll cover with you my experience last week and why I learned this phrase.
 
However before I do, a bit of NFTT business. Roses had planned to use this space this week to do a wrap-up diary about NFTT, however she needed to catch up the many things that had been delayed in her RL due to her involvement and chairmanship of the NFTT event. So she'll be posting it sometime next week. LOOK FOR IT! Read it and recommend it.

I've met Stuart Rothenberg. He seems like a very nice man. However, like my opponent Robin Hayes, I think that maybe Mr. Rothenberg has been in Washington too long to understand that a people powered campaign isn't an urban legend.

Thus in response to Rothenberg's latest column, For House Races now, It's All A Question of Money, I say he doesn't get it. At all.

Kissell’s fundraising this time has been stunningly inadequate. He may still win, but not because of anything he has done in fundraising.

I'd like to take a small point of personal privilege in this diary (of course, what is a diary if not expressing personal privilege?  But I digress) to share a quick story from our home yesterday evening.

The quote in the title is from the oldest of the two pre-schoolers in our house.  Early in the afternoon I tuned into the teevee broadcast to catch Obama's speech.  Perhaps you've seen pictures from the event:

House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations
10:00am EDT

This will be shown on C-Span 1 TV

Links:  C-Span 1 - follow link on home page
   From afterdowningstreet.org:

KPFA & Pacifica Radio will air Friday's hearing from 9:00AM - 1:00PM EDT streamed live at pacifica.org and kpfa.org and on the air at KPFA (Berkeley), KPFK (Los Angeles), KPFT (Houston), and others TBD.

When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Barack Obama
2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address

I hope I can be forgiven for repeating this diary for those who missed it the first time.  

This won't be the standard-issue karateexplosions diary, and I do apologize for that.  There's just not a whole lot of funny in this story.  But that doesn't mean we have to forgo the kitty picture:

Do you read the paper editions of the New York Times?  The Washington Post?

If so, this morning was both a profound disappointment and a confirmation about the motives of the traditional media.

Both papers featured large pictures of Barack Obama in Berlin.  But neither paper could resist biasing their coverage.

The Times?  Leads with another questionable headline: Obama, Vague on Issues, Pleases Crowd in Europe

Vague on issues?  You wanted him to get into a domestic policy speech in Berlin?  When Ronald Reagan said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" was he being too vague about the wall he was referring to?  Was he wrong not to give Gorbachev a twelve-point plan for tearing down the wall?  

When John Kennedy said "Ich bin ein Berliner", was he being too vague?  Should he have referred to the particular street he lived on in Berlin?  Should he have mentioned his neighbors, the Schmidts?

And the Post, believe it or not, was even worse.

First, it was Condi Rice's memo to American consulates abroad, now Pentagon...

There was much of noise last night over Der Spiegel's report that Obama camp cancelled his previously planned trip to the hopsital in Berlin. Rush, Hannity, all had crap to talk about. Some at Faux Noise suggested the trip was cancelled because there was no photo op, developing a new meme against Obama.

It is now confirmed that Pentagon played a crucial role in cancellation:

"Senator Obama had hoped to and had every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country," retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration, an Obama adviser, said in a statement.

"We learned from the Pentagon [Wednesday] night that the visit would be viewed instead as a campaign event. Senator Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors percieved as a campaign event...and decided instead not to go."  

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...

I have a nicely aged six foot cedar fence that runs across the back of my house. The backyard extends around 25 feet from the back of the house to the fence; the fence’s length along the back of the lot is close to 100 feet. The back fence, it keeps things out and keeps my dogs in. The north side connector fence is a cyclone fence, see-through and lacking in privacy.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.

Somebody has to say it, so I will:

John McCain is a grifter and a scoundrel.

He has built a career on a carefully crafted myth breathlessly repeated by his base of sycophants in the press. You know the hype: McCain the Maverick, McCain the Reformer, McCain the Straight Talker, McCain the ______ (insert worshipful drivel here).

Keep in mind that the same folks who sold George W. Bush and his failed policies to America are now working the streets to sell the myth of McCain—"the last honest man in politics".

Those willing to look behind the curtain will find a John McCain that has always surrounded himself with the most corrupt players on the political stage and kept himself one step ahead of exposure. His Abramoff investigation cover-up is a case in point (for details see this Diary).

Another one is the growing scandal swirling around his chief foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann.

Randy shapes McCain’s foreign policy and—surprise—that policy helps Randy’s former and future clients. Ca-ching!

This, you need to know about.

To the jump...

I must apologize I don't write diaries, but this is breaking in the blogs and needs more juice.  Karl Rove has been accused of threatening a primary witness in for the plaintiffs in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell.  Check out Brad Blog as well as ePluribusMediafor a backgrounder on the new "IT Forest Gump" genious computer Guru who has handled IT business for the Republicans since they lost New Hampshire in 2000.

Update: King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell link

OMG: Criminal "threatening" corrected thanks to Shpilk

updated: Meet Matthew Kairis an attorney with the law firm Jones Day, who represents one or more of the "defendants" in this case.

I haven't been reading diaries about The Speech today, so I don't know if I'm being redundant, or just sawing off my own personal limb, but I am filled with such an all consuming anger as to be more than a bit irrational.

I heard a masterful presentation address a renewal of American foreign policy by one of the most sophisticated minds on the international stage.

I also heard the run up.  Mincing, prissy words by small minds, herded together to throw stones at the "other" who refuses to conform to their limited, and limiting, world view.

Then I watched interviews with "regular guys", who clearly had no idea what they had seen or heard at the Tiergarten, yet felt no hesitation in parading their fear and ignorance across the stage with inartful comment.  

I left the Scottish Lowlands this morning and flew to Berlin to see the man. And let me tell you people that it sure was great! Lots of people were there, lots of different nationalities. There were many Germans and many Americans of course, but people had come from all over Europe to see Obama. I met Spaniards, Italians, Romanians, French, Czechs and British all very enthusiastic about Obama and the future he represents for all of us. I got lots of things to say about what I thought of the speech and about the reactions it inspired in the people around me, but I'll leave that for a more substantial diary that I will try to get together shortly. I'm completely shattered now so I just wanted to share some of the pictures I took with you. Hope you enjoy them!

Obama’08 flies high...

I am so mad right now I don't know what to do.  For those unfamiliar with me, I live in a small, conservative, republican town in Georgia.  I just had a HUGE argument with my next door neighbor.  After seeing my new shiny Obama sticker on my van, she launched into an attack on me that was unprovoked and very unsettling.  She asked me why he couldn't say the pledge of allegiance to which I replied, that is not true.  I then explained the details of various lies and smears.  She continued to bring up every smear out there from the pledge to the swearing in on the Koran.  I told her she needed to check her facts as these had all been disproved.  She then asked, "So if he is a Muslim, and did swear on a Koran, then would you still support him?"  I explained that I would support him because a person's religion is not an important factor to me.  Which is when she said, "I hope if he gets elected, that he is shot and killed within 24 hours!"

Crossposted at Strategy08

This may make McCain blow a gasket:

This looks to be pretty big news.  A previously secret memo on torture under the Bush administration has just been released.

CNN article

The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture unless they "have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," according to a previously secret Justice Department memo released Thursday.

The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds.

"Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture," Jay Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, wrote in the memo.

So there you have it.  If the interrogator didn't mean to torture the suspect, it wasn't torture!  Brilliant logic from the Bush administration yet again!

They chanted

USA! USA! USA!

They chanted

USA! USA! USA!

They chanted

USA! USA! USA! ...

There is one more John McCain gaffe that the media missed from the now famous CBS interview with Katie Couric.

This is the same interview in which McCain claimed the surge led to the Anbar Awakening, which is demonstrably false. But watch below for another gaffe when McCain says Iraq was the first major conflict after 9/11.