al gore has been out slamming the bush administration. they played a condensed version on the o'franken factor this morning. i really appreciate proxy role that he, dean and others are playing, getting out there and saying the things that kerry can't. paul krugman thinks that bush's teflon coating has just about worn off.
last month there was one crazy ass bike brawl here in town. some cyclists let the air out of a drunk guy's tires so he wouldn't drive off. drunk guy and his friends found the cyclists and fight ensued. indymedia has a write up on it.
mark schmitt has some very interesting comments describing the way the senate works.
my dad pointed me toward the latest sy hersh article about the prisoner abuse. apparently he's located quite a bit of evidence linking rumsfeld and the pentagon's civilian leadership to the torture. my dad is certain that rummy will resign by the end of the week. i expect this to be the top story tomorrow and for the rest of the week.
in an effort to further distract from stories of our abuse of iraqi prisoners bush has announced that we're imposing further sanctions on syria. bush had a couple of brilliant things to say. calling syria an "unusual and extraordinary threat" one might wonder how the president's comments could been any stupider. i suppose he could have accused the syrians of systematic abuse and torture of their prisoners.
i highly recommend kevin drum's round up of links about abu ghraib. it's enough to make you sick.
i've been doing a few stories for kpsu's radio news. yesterday they aired my piece on kucinich judging the vegan cookie contest. last week they played my piece on bike theft. it isn't great, it was a bit of a learning process but i'm getting there.
today i went out to america votes' voter registration event. it was a great event and i got some good audio for next week's story. i had a great interview with the executive director of moveon.org, peter schurman, but in the process of trying to organize the tracks on the minidisc deleted it. i'm pretty pissed about it but i think i'll be able to do a pretty good story without it.
in the afternoon i went over to see amy goodman of democracy now speak as part of the tour promoting her book, the exception to the rulers. she's a very moving speaker. i was slightly nauseous for about half of her presentation as she detailed all the wonderful things the cia is doing in our name. listening to her arguments about the way the american media has worked to shape public perception of the war has me pretty fired up about perusing the independent journalism. not that i'm not planning on switching majors or anything but that's where a lot of my energy is going to be directed.
i've finally had a good reason to link to the gad flyer. they have the funniest recreation of george and dick's testimony ever. don't forget to check out that photoshoped flyer.
maybe you haven't noticed but some of our troops are taking over where sadam left off. the new yorker has (less censored) photos of the torture going on in sadam's old prisons. we only know of one rape and two murders but sadam had 35 years to get where he was. we'll catch up soon enough.
denis kucinich was the celebrity judge of the cookie bake off put on by foodfight, portland's vegan grocery store. he's vegan--the only one o i know of in congress--so it was fitting that he was the judge. the best part was his anecdote about traveling around the us campaigning and coming to portland and finding vegan marshmallows.
i got a quick interview with him that i'll turn into a a news story for kpsu. i'm going to peg it on the story of how the whole event came together. the food fight people had been planning an event to celebrate the opening of their new neighbor, otsu, so when kucinich's campaign manager came down to buy more of the marshmallows they were like "damn we know what were' gonna do" and it just came together.
on a personal note, i was really impressed with him, he was funny, well spoken, and in touch with the issues. if i was a registered democrat (and right now i'm wishing i was) he'd have my vote in the primary.