So, I really dislike meta diaries, but this seemed to be the only way to do this cleanly and without arousing suspicion.

Last night I posted a diary that needlessly caused some confusion because, as the world o' blogs and I have both grown and evolved, so have my usernames.

Chuck Schumer, DailyKos, 21 March 2007:

Last cycle, I saw firsthand the transformational role bloggers are playing in our Party.  Jim Webb and Jon Tester, candidates who were supported early by the blogosphere, are just two of the most prominent examples of the role the netroots can play in helping Democrats win more Senate seats.

...Netroots support is a key metric the DSCC uses to determine the viability of any given candidate.  And the importance of netroots support is often larger in the early stages of an election cycle.  Now is the time when the netroots can help find candidates and build the energy they'll need to win.  

That's where you come in.

Awesome!

Sometimes a cut and paste hatchet job diary is necessary.  This is one of those times. WaPo:

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.

...The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.

(more)

I'll get right to the point. I'm looking for a reasonable explanation for something I happened to notice today about John McCain's visit to New Hampshire.

McCain's itinerary, at least as late as March 13 was set to take the Straight Talk Express from Milford at 10am to a town hall meeting in Newport at 3pm:

Saturday March 17th, 2007
What: Newport Town Hall Meeting
When: 3:00pm
Where: Newport Opera House
20 Main Street - Newport, NH

Yet today he ended up going from Milford to Lebanon:

Town Hall Meeting in Lebanon, New Hampshire
3:15 p.m. EDT
Lebanon High School
High School Cafeteria
195 Hanover Street
Lebanon, New Hampshire 03766

Before the MSM gets into a tizzy over the fact that John Sununu was the first Republican to call for Abu Gonzo's head, it's well worth remembering that back in 2005, when the Junior Senator Johnny was not faced with a difficult (nay, impossible, imho) re-election season, he was all too eager to champion Gonzales' taste for torture by claiming that human rights organizations actually endorsed Gonzales' abandonment of the Geneva Conventions.

Below the fold is a reposting of a diary I wrote on Blue Hampshire a few days ago.  It seems worth spreading around a bit more given today's news.

That's the only conclusion a reader could come to from the latest hit piece on him from Michael Duffy of Time Magazine.

Language matters. You don't need to make up facts to assassinate someone in print. Angle and tone will do the job more quickly.

I mean, how am I supposed to read this in any other way than to understand Harry Reid to be stupid,

The details of Reid's resolution are fuzzy because the Democratic leadership only just glommed onto this idea last week

Please bear with me: this diary will have you smiling, and I think you can agree that we could all use some good news now and then in the final dark years of BushWorld.

Last week at Blue Hampshire State Representative Jim Splaine graced us with a diary, Iraq: This Déjà Vu Is Insane, wherein he wrote:

But this war has to end.  We don't need a target date to pull out.  We just need to get out.  We need to apologize for the attack, reduce our troop level to zero, get our brave soldiers home safely, claim the good we did by getting Saddam and his Republican Guard out of power, and work diplomatically with the Iraq government and regional interests to try to bring some stability to that part of the world.  That makes more sense than what we're doing now.

Yesterday in New Hampshire we were treated to seeing the country's "fastest senator" run away from reporters like a scared child on the issue of Iraq and the Warner resolution.

Today the dream of a New Hampshire without Bush enablers just came a little closer to being realized, thanks to Sununu's cowardice.  Gary Hirshberg, "CE-Yo" of the hugely successful and environmentally progressive Stonyfield Farm, may still be deciding whether to run or not, but this press release just made my day.  Some highlights:

New Hampshire citizens should be outraged that our two senators cannot do the one job that they have been elected to perform, namely to take a position," says Hirshberg, President and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, Inc. 

..."Every time I start to get comfortable with the idea that I should not run, Senator Sununu does something else that makes my blood boil," says Hirshberg.

Unbelievable.  Can it be hyperbole any longer to call Bush II the worst president in American history when posthumous commanders-in-chief from his own party find ways to slam him?  WaPo, A1 (emphases mine):

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

Can Nixon be far behind?

Crossposted with different title at Blue Hampshire, a progressive online community for the Granite State.

Judd Gregg (R-NH), September 2006:

"It [phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq] is a policy that is firmly grounded in Birkenstocks and clearly not grounded in the reality of the world as it is," Gregg said.

Judd Gregg, Today:

"There is no question but that we need to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from Iraq in a reasonable way that doesn't undermine our commitment to trying to make that country independent, free and oriented toward the market economy," Gregg said in a written statement.

I just saw this in WaPo lumped together with all the other stories on Google News about the abducted contracters, but this seems to be a distinct event:

ZUBAYR, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi police said they killed an American in civilian clothes and wounded another on Friday after the men shot dead two police officers just outside the southern town of Zubayr.

There's really no other way to put it.  On every single platform and in every respect, Republicans were massacred in New Hampshire last night.  This state, long known for being the lone traditional conservative stronghold in New England, didn't just turn blue last night, it removed all traces of red for perhaps a generation or more.

The one everyone was watching? Would netroots candidate Paul Hodes defeat 12-year incumbent Charlie Bass?

You bet he would.

The race no one in the MSM was watching?  Would Carol Shea-Porter's grassroots effort be another "Granny D" quixotic attempt?

Ummm...no.  In what might be the biggest upset in the nation, Carol won.

(From the diaries. And yes, this is a serious possibility. Let's bankrupt the motherfrakers after this election -- kos)

As you may or may not know, 12-year Contract-w/-America breaker Charlie Bass is in the fight of his life against netroots candidate Paul Hodes.

Now that the polls are trending away from Bass, and his support among independents is weaker than it has ever been, the NRCC has been called in to bail his sorry butt out.

So in true GOP form, the NRCC decided to carpet bomb our state with robocalls that pretend to come from the Hodes campaign, while eventually providing misleading negative info.

So what, you say? Typical lowlife GOP sleaze tactic.  

Well, there is a big difference here.  The NRCC was calling Granite Staters on the Do-Not-Call list, which is a violation of state law, carrying a penalty of $5,000 per violation.  To date, the NRCC admitted to 200,000 robocalls.

That means the NRCC is potentially facing a $100 million dollar penalty.

OK, I was being snarky; but unlike Ken Mehlman, at least I was doing it up front, instead of putting a tiny little disclaimer at the bottom, like this RNC site: America Weakly

America Weakly is a satirical publication containing fictional news stories of a fictitious future.

Unless otherwise specified, the content of this publication should not be viewed as a depiction of actual events.

What a terrific use of Republican campaign money.

DavidNYC over at Swing State Project reminds us that today is really the last day to make our donations count, since money received now will help determine critical decisions about how and where campaign s can allocate their money over the next 11 days.

So, if that's motivated you to give, but aren't sure on whom to bestow your hard-earned cash, I have a great idea:

Give to those candidates who not only know we exist, who not only do not treat us like a 24 hour ATM, but who actually listen to us.

Just such an example is NH-02 "Blue Hampshire" Congressional candidate Paul Hodes.

(Follow me over the fold to find out why.)

Please excuse the shortness of this diary, but I just read the following quote and I had to share it with you, so as to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth.  From the latest WaPo piece on the collapse of the GOP:

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters that two Republicans _ whom he declined to name _ had told him they would demand a new policy on Iraq after the election. He said the GOP lawmakers were told not to make waves before then because it could cost the party seats.

Remember, oh, about three pre-Foley weeks ago, when Charlie Bass' #2 guy, policy director Tad Furtado, resigned after it was discovered that he had been visiting my local blog, The Yankee Doodler and sock-puppeting Blue Granite, NH-02 Progressive, and Swing State Project? An important detail of that story is that he was not only posting concern troll comments to dissuade voters, but also that our blogs turned up in Google searches he was doing in what looked clearly like campaign-related opposition research:

(Go below the fold for a surprise...)

I can't say he was my favorite in the 2004 primary, but these words (AP via WaPo) sure made my day today.  Look who just used the L word:

"They tell us we're making progress in Iraq and that there is no civil war. That is a lie," Kerry, D-Mass., said in remarks prepared for delivery at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's annual fall fundraising dinner. "There is a civil war and it is costing American and Iraqi lives every single day, and we must change course in Iraq."