Jonny Lang
“Breakin Me”

Stephen Colbert on Meet the Press
Part One & Part Two

From an AP article titled “Giuliani tries to reassure conservatives“:

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, speaking Saturday night at a dinner in his honor, said he too believes starting a third party would fail. He pledged to vote for a minor-party candidate if both Democrats and Republicans nominate a candidate who supports abortion rights.

While Dobson said it was too early to talk about choosing “the lesser of two evils” - he didn’t mention Giuliani or any candidate by name - he made clear he would not make that choice.

“The only problem with that is it when you choose the lesser of two evils, you’ve still chosen evil,” he said. “And that leads to compromise, and I tell you, I can’t do that.”

AP Religion Writer Eric Gorski

Considering the past position of GOP front-runners on the issue of abortion, it would appear Mr. Dobson has painted himself into a corner. No matter how much Giuliani or Romney try to comfort the Religious-right with promises of conforming to their ideology, their history on this and other pressing anti-’values’ issues simply can’t be ignored.

Some pointers for the GOP front-runners: Rudy, when you attempt to placate these religious whackos with promises of an outright ban on abortions, do so while waving a clothes hanger in the air. They’ll know you mean business. And Mitt, you should drive around town in your pickup truck, with a baseball bat hanging in the back window and dragging barbed wire from the rear bumper. Then, when you tell these nuts you’re against gay marriage, they’ll believe you… and love you!

Bill Moyers had Jeremy Scahill on Friday night and it was a great interview. If you missed it, you can read the transcript or watch the video here. It was a great interview and Jeremy Scahill provides some chilling facts about the privatization of our military. He talks a little about Hurricane Katrina and the use of Blackwater in New Orleans and how Eric Prince sent his guys there before they had a contract. He also states he ran into some Israeli private security contractors at that time. James Reiss, a wealthy inhabitant of uptown New Orleans and chairman of the city’s Regional Transit Authority, brought in an Israeli private security company by helicopter to guard Audubon Place, the gated community in which he lives. As Scahill points out, the rich hire mercenaries and the poor suffer.

In other mercenary news:

• » Afghanistan is now cracking down on private security contractors. Echoing a growing problem in Iraq, Afghan authorities have started to crack down on lucrative but largely unregulated security firms, some of which are suspected of murder. Two private Afghan security companies were raided this week, and at least 10 more contractors - including some protecting embassies - will soon be closed, police and Western officials told The Associated Press. The government is also proposing new rules to tighten control over such companies _ including some Western contractors _ amid concerns they intimidate Afghans, disrespect local security forces and don’t cooperate with authorities, according to a policy draft document obtained by AP.
• » Tomorrow the U.S. and Mexico are to announce a counternarcotics plan that calls for increasing U.S. anti-drug aid to Mexico, now estimated at $44 million a year, to $1.4 billion over two to three years. It will probably involve U.S. private security contractors training Mexican troops.
• » Last week the U.S. rejected a U.N. report that said the use of private security guards like those involved in the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians amounted to a new form of mercenary activity. Although the use of mercenaries is discouraged in international rules of conduct of war, the hiring of foreign soldiers by one country for use in a third is specifically illegal only for the 30 countries that ratified a 1989 treaty. The U.S. and Iraq are among the many countries that never signed the accord.

One of the things you have to remember here, and that Scahill pointed out, is that our use of private security firms is putting our tax dollars right back into the pockets of politicians. Primarily the Republicans. Primarily the religious whacko republicans. There’s just something very very very wrong with this.

Eric Prince is a freak. A religious nut who has his own private army and who pumps millions of dollars back into the religious right’s coffers. I don’t know about you, but that scares the shit out of me. This year the Iraqi people suffer at the hands of Eric Prince’s mercenaries. Next year, it could be us.

Are you ready for some football?
WEEK 7
Sunday, Oct. 21
GAME TIME TV
Arizona at Washington 1:00 pm FOX
Atlanta at New Orleans 1:00 pm FOX
Baltimore at Buffalo 1:00 pm CBS
New England at Miami 1:00 pm CBS
San Francisco at N.Y. Giants 1:00 pm FOX
Tampa Bay at Detroit 1:00 pm FOX
Tennessee at Houston 1:00 pm CBS
Kansas City at Oakland 4:05 pm CBS
N.Y. Jets at Cincinnati 4:05 pm CBS
Chicago at Philadelphia 4:15 pm FOX
Minnesota at Dallas 4:15 pm FOX
St. Louis at Seattle 4:15 pm FOX
Pittsburgh at Denver 8:15 pm NBC

Big game today…………. I need the Giants to win.  Really really really need them to win!! And I can’t wait to see if the stinking Dolphins beat the Patriots. They’ve done it in the past. I think twice last year.

If these voters have these values, you can keep them!

Romney narrowly wins A-values voters- straw poll

Mitt Romney

Despite efforts to woo religious conservatives, Giuliani finishes distant 8th

WASHINGTON - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney narrowly won a Republican presidential straw poll of Christian conservatives on Saturday, while Rudy Giuliani persuaded few to look past his support of abortion rights.

The poll at a summit of self’styled values voters was largely symbolic but highlighted the continuing failure of ardent anti-abortion social conservatives to rally behind a single Republican candidate in the 2008 White House race.

Romney took 27.6 percent of almost 6,000 votes cast, just ahead of Mike Huckabee, the folksy former governor of Arkansas, who gained 27.1 percent at the conference organized by the Family Research Council.

Maverick Texas Congressman Ron Paul was third with almost 15 percent while former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson got under 10 percent, a major disappointment for his campaign.

Giuliani was eighth with 107 votes — under 2 percent.

Reuters

MSNBC.com

SUNDAY TALK

MTP: Stephen Colbert; PBS’s Judy Woodruff, Doris Kearns Goodwin, National Review’s Kate O’Beirne and Sally Bedell Smith (author, “For Love of Politics - Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years”) on gender and the presidential race
FTN: Mitt Romney (R-MA)
This Week: Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE); roundtable of Laura Ingraham, Mark Halperin, Donna Brazile and George Will; Tommy Lasorda
FNS: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); Mike Huckabee (R-AR)
Late Edition: Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA); Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI); Lebanese parliamentarian Walid Jumblatt; World Bank Pres. Robert Zoellick; Iraqi gov’t spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh; Russian pres. candidate Garry Kasparov; roundtable of Elaine Quijano, Bill Schneider, and Gloria Borger

TV ALERTS

* Newsmakers (C-SPAN, 10am, Sunday): Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for Office of the Iraqi Prime Minister
* 60 Minutes (CBS, Sun): Valerie Plame; the origins of Mega-Fires; Col. Morris Davis on why he’s upset about judicial process for Guantanamo detainees
* GOP debate 8pm on FNC, 9/21. (Pre’show at 7:30pm; post’show at 9:30pm)
* Morning Joe (MSNBC): Mayor Mike Bloomberg (R-NYC) 10/22; Frank Rich 10/22;
* Today Show: Valerie Plame on 10/22
* GMA: Laura Bush 10/22; Robin Roberts reports from Middle East 10/22 & 10/23
* Ellen DeGeneres: John & Elizabeth Edwards 10/22
* LKL: Valerie Plame & Joe Wilson 10/22; at 8pm, Orlando Bloom, Jeff Corwin, Heather Mills, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Anderson Cooper on 10/23 to preview “Planet in Peril”;
* Tavis Smiley (PBS): Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 10/22; Robert Reich 10/23; Col. Stephen Twitty 10/24; Rep. George Miller (D-CA) 10/25
* Charlie Rose (PBS): CIA dir. Michael Hayden 10/22
* Regis & Kelly: Anderson Cooper 10/23
* “The Noose: An American Nightmare” a CNN special 10/23, 8pm?
* “Planet in Peril” a CNN documentary. 10/23 & 10/24 at 9pm.
* The Daily Show: reruns
* The Colbert Report: reruns

Source