From the department of You Can't Make This Sh*t Up:

Republican Rep. Tom Price, of Georgia, has introduced a House resolution that would, if passed, express the legislative body's "gratitude and appreciation" to Tea Party members who marched on Washington on Sept. 12 to "show their love of liberty and their grievance with recent government actions."

The proposed resolution is co-signed by more than 70 members of the House.

The proposed resolution would single for praise the "hundreds of thousands of American patriots, who refuse to sit idly by as the Federal Government advances skyrocketing deficits, taxpayer-funded bailouts, pork-barrel projects, burdensome taxes, unaccountable policy czars, command-and-control energy policy, and a government takeover of health care, came to Washington, D.C, to show their disapproval ..."

So let me get this straight...Price wants to pass a resolution that would praise anti-government, right wing extremists who want to overthrow their president? Really? If one single Democrat votes for this garbage, you can be sure we will call them out and ridicule them mercilessly.

Just to be clear, there weren't hundreds of thousands of people at that joke of a march on September 12th. And this was not an anti-tax march, this was a well funded hate-fest that was organized by Fox News and Glenn Beck.

You can read Price's entire resolution here. For added entertainment, click through to the original article and check out some of the comments. Didn't they learn anything from our Jon Perr's 10 Lessons for Teabaggers?

Though the year is not yet halfway over, Mastodon's Crack the Skye will probably cap my end-of-year top 10 list. The Atlanta metal quartet are probably the most compelling metal act to come out since Metallica, hands-down the best American one, and currently the only one to have undeniable relevance outside of the extreme rock community. See their write-up (and drawing) in this week's New Yorker, doubters.

Though I'm still a bit partial to Leviathan, their concept album about Moby Dick from 2004, the new album (from which 'Divinations' is taken) is grander in scope and more deeply layered than anything they've done before. That an album as dark and ambitious as Crack the Skye can crack the Billboard Top 200 (it debuted at #11) is reason for metalheads and easy-listeners alike to celebrate.

Side-note: Many of you may know Mastodon from their guest appearance in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie.

Every Monday, C&L's Late Nite Music Club will feature an up-and-coming act from every state, alphabetically by state, as part of LNMC's 50 State Strategy. Know a band or artist that you think is the best in their state? Email suggestions to latenitemusicclub [at] gmail.com.

Watch the end of this Saxby Chambliss commercial, and keep a close eye on Sexby's -- I mean Saxby's -- right hand at the end:

He totally goes all second-base on that pre-pubescent girl. And at the very end he looks down at, errrm, something. I don't want to speculate as to what the hell he's doing, but I challenge you not to be weirded out by the creepiness of it.

(Cross posted at BobCesca.com)

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Sarah Palin's out in Georgia today, ostensibly campaigning for the execrable Saxby Chambliss with her usual brand of right-wing populism that plays especially well in places like Gwinnett and Forsyth counties.

I say ostensibly, because who she's really campaigning for is Sarah Palin in 2012. These campaign stops are all about Palin positioning herself to become the leading figurehead of the Republican Party. Lotsa luck with that, of course. (You betcha!) [Wink]

But in the meantime, the fine folks back in Alaska are wondering what became of their governor. The Alaska Democratic Party's chairman, Patti Higgins, held a press conference a little earlier today raising that question. From their press release:

Palin has been back in Alaska at work for only a few days since running for vice president.

"Alaskans need our Governor here earning her salary and working on key problems facing Alaska families," said Alaska Democratic Party Chair Patti Higgins.

Alaska is facing significant challenges, Higgins said, including:

• Oil prices have dropped dramatically to about $45/bbl from the peak of $144/bbl in July, which threatens the state budget.
• Alaskans are paying some of the highest prices for gas in the nation, averaging $2.87 per gallon, while the national average is $1.91.
• The state's oil production continues to decline, due to falling prices and mature fields.
• The global credit crunch and falling natural gas prices threaten the Alaska gas line.
• The State is failing to meet its constitutional obligation to take care of public education as shown by the high drop out rates and the low graduation rates.
• Many Medicare patients cannot find doctors.
• There is continued flight from rural villages.
• Alaska faces the prospect of reduced federal dollars from Washington, D.C.

"Alaska's challenges are significant, and there is much that needs to be done right now. Our Governor should remember that her primary job is to work on behalf of the citizens of Alaska, not engage in partisan politics in other states," Higgins said. "Governing is more than creating photo ops. We'd like a commitment that the Governor is working, not just scheduling media appearances."

In a way, though, there's a certain symmetry about Palin gallivanting off to campaign for Chambliss. It makes clear she really doesn't give a rat's hindquarters about her actual constituents.

And as Senate Guru explains, neither does Saxby Chambliss. Two peas in a pod.

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Saxby Chambliss continues to lie misrepresent the reasons for the Georgia Senate runoff on Tuesday. In the first instance he claims he must have gotten a good portion of the African American vote on Nov. 4th to have been able to have beaten Jim Martin. Exit polling reveals Jim Martin got 93% of that vote, just under what Barack Obama got in the state. Chambliss also claims to have gotten more votes than Obama, which is in fact true, slightly over 23,000 more. However, what he conveniently neglected to mention is that he got 200,000 less than John McCain.

Earlier this month on Hannity and Colmes, Chambliss gave as the reason for this closeness of the result that the Obama people getting out their vote, especially early.

COLMES: Why do you think you’ve been unable…[to] close the deal with the people of Georgia in terms of what happened on Election Day?

CHAMBLISS: Well, listen, we have, for the first time in the history the our state, a 30-day advanced vote period, and let’s give the Obama people credit. They did a good job of getting out their vote early.

There was a high percentage of minority vote, and I am tickled to death that as many Georgians as did examined their right to vote. That’s what make our election process the envy of the whole free world, but we weren’t able to get enough of our folks out on Election Day.

Gee, I wonder who he was talking about? Think Progress has the video. And for the record, Chambliss got about 70% of the "our folks" (white) vote.

The other factor for the surprisingly close result earlier was Chambliss's support of the bailout package in September, despite Chambliss throwing cold water on such recession talk a few months earlier, saying "I don't know if we're in a recession. I don't know what that even means." And that's true, he apparently doesn't, giving the definition as "two consecutive months of negative GDP growth". In fact, it's quarters, not months.

They really don't come much scummier than Freedom's Watch, the wretched excuses for human beings who smeared Democratic candidates this past campaign with lying robo-calls. The DCCC's anti-FW site has the goods on their deep GOP ties.

Supposedly they're about to go out of business. But evidently -- like the dying sting of a scorpion -- they're taking one last stab.

Now they're running truly vicious ads attacking Jim Martin, the Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia currently facing a runoff election:

Yesterday, the struggling Freedom’s Watch released an attack ad against Georgia’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Martin, saying that he “failed to look out for Georgia’s families.” “First he actually helped block stiffer penalties for drunk drivers,” warns the voice in the ad, which echoes previous GOP ads. “And then, Martin voted against tougher sentences for domestic abuse.”

As it happens, Martin built much of his political reputation as an effective advocate for protecting children from criminals -- no doubt a product of having his then-8-year-old daughter kidnapped. So he made an ad responding to the Freedom's Watch ad by pointing this out. As you can see, it's incredibly effective.

Of course, this is all too reminiscent of the way Chambliss won in 2002 -- with Republican operatives assailing the patriotism of Max Cleland, a decorated war veteran who left limbs on the battlefield.

It may have worked in 2002. In 2008, though, the national mood is different. Recall what happened to Elizabeth Dole when she tried pulling similarly nasty tactics near the end of her campaign against Kay Hagan in North Carolina -- she was spanked by an even wider margin than polls had indicated.

Most people are tired of this nonsense -- they want serious people who will go to work to solve the nation's problems. Hopefully, the voters of Georgia will be thinking likewise.

Via Blue Texan.

Apparently the Republican Senator from Georgia doesn't like it when asked normal questions by a reporter about refusing to honor a subpoena in the lawsuit against a sugar company that sought his help to insulate them from culpability in the wake of an explosion at one of its plants that killed 14 people.

As he makes the cameraman say hello to Mr. Hand, he mutters:

"You can take it away now."

So evidently, not only is Chambliss above the law, he's above any kind of accountability to the public. Sounds like a classic Republican to me.

Go Jim Martin!

November 13, 2008 C-SPAN
Senator Saxby Chambliss held a campaign rally at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta for his runoff election. He was joined by Senator John McCain.

On Friday, a car bomb blew up three civilians and eight Russian soldiers, including a senior officer, in the disputed South Ossetia region of Georgia. Russia blames the Georgian secret service for the blast, saying they are trying to destabilize the fragile ceasefire while the Georgians (rather less believably) say the explosion was a false flag operation - that Russia blew up its own peacekeeping troops in order to blame Saakashvili's government and to give an excuse for delaying an expected pullback of Russian troops. However, the Georgian interior ministry spokesman who made the counter-allegation offered no evidence that the Russians had any actual plans to delay their pullback.

It's a messy incident, one that shows the Caucusus conflict is far from finished creating tensions both in the region and globally, and also offers more opportunity for observers to question just how trustworthy and truthful Saakashvili's regime is being. The original midnight all-out attack on his own region's capital which started the whole current confrontation might be reason enough for some - Colin Powell certainly seems to be in that camp - but now Georgian opposition members are also calling attention back to last years elections and widespread abuses of both opposition members and the press.

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  On CNN Sunday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell offered some "straight-talk" on the Georgia/Russia conflict, and not-so-subtly insinuated that McCain's rather belligerent response was careless and unnecessarily provocative.

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POWELL: And I think it was foolhardy on the part of President Saakashvili and the Georgian government to kick over this can, to light a match in a roomful of gas fumes.

SESNO: So you're saying the Georgians provoked this?

POWELL: They did. I mean, there was a lot of reasons to have provocations in the area, but the match that started the conflagration was from the Georgian side.

AMANPOUR: And yet...

POWELL: And that's a given.

AMANPOUR: And some debate in the presidential elections has basically been, "We are all Georgians now." What does that mean? It's the same as was said after 9/11.

POWELL: One candidate said that, and I'll let the candidate explain it for himself. [...]  You have to be very careful in a situation like this not just to leap to one side or the other until you've taken a good analysis of the whole situation.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that Powell will throw his support behind Obama. Powell is rightfully criticized for pushing the administration's bogus case for war with Iraq, but there's no denying he is a respected voice of foreign affairs.  The message an Obama endorsement would send would be a huge blow to McCain.

Fallout from the Georgian conflict is still widening, in what may become the defining foreign policy issue of the 2008 US elections. 

In yet another example of Bush administration "diplomacy", Condi Rice is seemingly refusing to talk to her Russian counterpart about escalating tensions in Georgia - even over the phone.

Two and a half years ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said U.S. ties with Russia were the best they had been for "quite some time."

Now she and her Russian counterpart are barely on speaking terms over Georgia, and foreign policy analysts are worried that the soured relations will curtail Washington's diplomatic clout around the world.

... U.S. officials said on Friday Rice had not spoken to Lavrov for nearly two weeks -- since a ceasefire was negotiated that Washington accuses Russia of disobeying.

She has not visited Moscow either, but she went to Georgia to show support for beleaguered President Mikheil Saakashvili.

"There's no need to pick up the phone and talk to the Russians right now," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood.

Meanwhile, Russia is saying it will respond in kind to any Western measures against it, meeting sanctions with sanctions or aggression with aggression.

"Russia does not want confrontation with any country. Russia does not plan to isolate itself," Medvedev said in an interview with Russia's three main television stations.

But he added: "Everyone should understand that if someone launches an aggressive sortie, he will receive a response."

The comment may well have been aimed at bellicose rhetoric from Republican candidate John McCain and from his campaign proxies. By now, in normal times, the crisis in Georgia would be calming down. But it hasn't and Russia has explicity accused the Bush administration of hyping the conflict to aid the Republican election campaign. That has been denied, of course, but Russia has pointed to an American passport (h/t Kat) - belonging to a Texan named Michael Lee White - which was found in a building occupied by Georgian commandos as circumstantial evidence that US advisors were aiding Georgian troops during the fighting. (EDIT: White has denied involvement and said his passport was stolen on a flight from Moscow back in December 2005.)

The title on the post does not reflect badly on the FOX journalists that were running. I would have been right beside them. The Georgians were firing on them...

R: Georgian forces have begun firing on journalists with pistols. They are undisciplined, angry and humiliated.

One minute you are sitting down with Russian forces and the next minute, car loads of Georgian forces drive up, they're furious and they seem to take out that fury, that humiliation on the people they can. The journalists.

What would Cheney and McCain say to that?

  At a press conference today in Tbilsi, Georgia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a six point deal brokered by French President Sarkozy that would require the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the disputed territories.

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"The Russian attack on Georgia had profound implications and will have profound implications for Russia's relations with its neighbors and with the world. But our most urgent task today is the immediate and orderly withdrawal of Russian armed forces and the return of those forces to Russia. France has brokered a six part cease fire accord that will achieve that result if it is indeed honored."

Local Georgian news outlet Civil has more.

UPDATE: Georgian President Saakashvili has signed the cease-fire deal.

Rough transcript below the fold:

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I think Digby is on to something:

I remember reading some stuff recently about how it was unseemly for Barack Obama to go on an overseas trip. Why, he was acting like he'd already won! Now, we have McCain making statements on television that are having an actual impact on an international crisis, and which might even be illegal, and I'm hearing gasbags say he looks very presidential. It looks more like presumptuousness to me.

But then a grizzled old veteran's presumptuousness isn't the same as a young, African American upstart's, is it?

Even Jonathan Martin at the Politico sees something amiss with this one:

I think Greg Sargent is on to something regarding McCain's announcement at his press conference today that Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman — his two closest friends in the Senate — will be heading to Georgia soon.

Yes, they're both members of the Armed Services Committee. But McCain's declaration has something of a shadow government feel to it, as though he's sending his own emissaries into the war zone.

Try to imagine if Obama had announced that he was sending Biden and Levin to the war zone.

 When I heard  John McCain say that he was sending Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman over to Georgia because they are on the Armed Services committee I immediately thought this was another Rovian set up.

 McCain: After the events of the past six days, no one should wonder why countries on Russia's periphery so ardently seek the security guarantees alliance membership represents. The situation in Georgia remains fluid and dangerous. And as soon as possible, my colleagues, Senator Lieberman and Senator Graham, will be traveling to Georgia.

He wants to prove to the world what a true leader he is. How convenient, but what would have happened if Obama had come out first and said he was sending over Joe Biden and Carl Levin to the same area?

Would we hear screaming from the right wing press and the Villagers that Obama was being presumptuous again---thought he was already President and was trying to be the ruler of the world. Rick Davis would have went on TV and started yelling that Obama was acting like the Celebrity President again because Bush was the real President and only he should be leading the country at a time like this.This whole affair stinks to the high heavens.

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Jon Stewart recaps the current situation in Georgia (and the media's ridiculous coverage of it), and calls out President Bush for having the chutzpah to condemn Russia for invading and disrespecting Georgia's sovereignty -- because only reckless bully countries with no disregard for international standards do that kind of stuff.

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Stewart: "It'll be very interesting to see what the United States does here. Our invasion of Iraq somewhat hamstrings our options in Georgia, not just militarily, but also dimplomaticly, and I guess you would say, morally? Let's watch our UN Ambsassador Zalmay Khalilzad dance the delicate dance...

Khalilzad: We want to make sure our Russian colleagues understand that the days of overthrowing leaders by miulityary means...

Stewart: Careful, Khalilza. Steady...steady...

Khalilzad: The days of overthrowing leaders by military means in Europe, those days are gone...

Stewart: Yes! He did it! Those days are gone...in Europe. In the Middle East, it's morning in America.