Fellow blogger over at FutureMajority.com has just released an expose on what has been said to be one of the fastest rising political youth organizations in the country. As it turns out - the group is a front group for ultra-conservative economic policy, spinning fake or cherry picked polling data, and running one of the largest AstroTurf 2.0 operations ever seen!

While the GOP has made gains with young white males (though just how much is in question do to an oversampling of the south in the cited report) since the period those surveys were done, overall the ethnically diverse Millennials have not drastically changed, with the majority of disappointment in Washington coming from the left...

"Generation Opportunity bases their legitimacy on the number of followers on their Facebook page, "Being American." At the time of writing, the page has just under 940,000 fans, which would be very impressive for an organization that was publicly announced less than 3 months ago. According to their announcement press release, their fan page already had over 600,000 fans before they even publicly announced their existence. That is a little bit too impressive. . . .Then again, Generation Opportunity doesn't have any fans, "Being American" does. Apparently, "Being American" is a Generation Opportunity project. Let me translate: someone gave Generation Opportunity the existing page for "Being American" and the organization branded it as their own. Anyone who has ever liked "Being American" on Facebook because they like being American is unwillingly being counted as a supporter of this organization, and Generation Opportunity is using these people as 'evidence' that they are legitimate and "one of the largest and fastest growing organizations targeting young Americans." This is astroturfing 2.0. . . . "

"Generation Opportunity is a conservative astroturf front group being used to push a pro-conservative youth narrative using the false legitimacy of their acquired Facebook page. There are no Millennials involved. There is nobody involved in the organization that is not a conservative activist. None of their polling data has included crosstabs or demographics.. . ."

"Paul T. Conway, Kellyanne Conway, and Matthew Faraci are not bad people. Kellyanne Conway in particular has been a long-time advocate of youth outreach on the right and has spoken openly about improving voter access. If conservatives want to start another youth outreach or advocacy group, more power to them. I welcome the addition of organizations that seek to engage young voters regardless of their place on the political spectrum. However, I do not support the idea of a falsely non-partisan organization disingenuously using the followers of another Facebook page as legitimacy to push a conservative narrative so it looks unbiased."

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What I've always loved about Russ is that, irrespective of political ideology, he has remarkable personal integrity and political courage that are sadly all too rare for United States senators. Even more impressively, Russ understands that the goal of being a senator should be the betterment of America and not the betterment of himself. For example, Russ has not only opposed giving himself a raise year after year, but he's actually returned the raises that senators have typically gotten automatically every year. There are very few politicians out there who will turn down extra money, but Russ Feingold is one of them.

Additionally, Russ Feingold was the one Democrat to buck his party on financial reform because he (correctly) felt that the bill didn't go far enough to rein in the power of the banks. Russ, bless his heart, was also one of the few Senate Democrats smart enough to vote against the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act, which for decades had served as a firewall between commercial and investment banks. And of course, when Wall Street came limping into Washington in the fall of 2008 begging for bailout cash, Russ told them to get lost.

And Russ's stances on key economic issues are not his only virtues. As Glenn Greenwald notes, his brave stands on civil liberties issues have been no less compelling, none more so than his lonely vote against the USA PATRIOT Act a mere six weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

For all the good that Russ Feingold has done for this country, I think it's time we help him back. Russ is locked in a very tight race with yet another richy-rich conservative who wants to use his fortune to buy himself a cushy Senate seat. Ron Johnson is your standard fare Banana Republican who rails against the government intruding on the "free market" but is only too happy to line up at the troth if he has the opportunity. And like most Banana Republicans, he longs to see America instill more "business certainty" into its economy by acting more like China, which doesn't have any pesky labor or environmental laws to get in the way of the quest for corporate profits.

Replacing Russ Feingold with Ron Johnson would be like throwing out all your Bob Dylan records and replacing them with Justin Beiber MP3s: In other words, you'd be tossing out a soulful, truth-tellin' Midwestern Jewish progressive for a creepy piece of corporate plastic. That's not what I want and I'm pretty sure you don't want it either. That's why today we've set up a Russ Feingold moneybomb cheddarbomb page here so you can donate money to Russ's campaign and keep him in the Senate, where we need his toughness, intelligence and values now more than ever.

As an added bonus, we'll be hosting a live chat today with Senator Feingold hosted by our own Susie Madrak. Susie, if you'd like to take it away now, I present you all with one of my heroes, Senator Russ Feingold.

Be sure to check out Russ's Act Blue page.

Paul Newman, 1925 - 2008 RIP

["Plastic Jesus" written by Ed Rush and George Cromarty, and sung by Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke." h/t Driftglass.]

Ned Lamont pays tribute to Paul Newman

I agree with Joe Biden. Biden said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut." Tax cuts in a time of war, or a time of massive financial crisis, are unpatriotic. But not just tax cuts for the rich.

This should flow logically from rightwing positions as well as from "kitchen table" common sense that you can't spend more than you make. As I wrote in 2005:

"In times of war when the military needs every cent for armor, bullets and bandages, it is verging on treasonous to avoid paying taxes even if the methods used are ostensibly legal. It certainly isn't supporting the troops or the war on terror."

That was the point about the "Good War', WW2. Everyone shared the fiscal burden. Either a war is worth that commitment or it isn't, and rightwingers have consistently argued that the War on Some Terror is a generational war just as vital as WW2. Bush in 2005 said it:

World War II generation endured great suffering and sacrifice because they understood that defeating tyranny in Europe and Asia was essential to the security and freedom of America.

Like previous wars we have waged to protect our freedom, the war on terror requires great sacrifice from Americans.

So, here's the sacrifice. Put your money where your mouths are and make it.

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Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan was on Sunday's "This Week" and told George Stephanopoulos that the current financial crisis is a "once in a century" eventwhich he wouldn't bet on leading anywhere except to recession. Gloomily, Greenspan explained how US house prices, now in freefall, underlie the US government paper that permeates the world economy - and that consequently the rest of the world is suffering even more than America is from a home-grown US financial collapse.

And, on Saturday the Associated Press reported remarks by Greenspan that clearly indicate he doesn't think John McCain is the one to steer America and the world through that collapse.

"Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.

"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "I always have tied tax cuts to spending."

That McCain's "Bush-Plus" budget planning, which would make Bush's tax cuts permanent while introducing extra cuts benefiting mostly the very rich and corporations and would aim to offset those cuts by cutting earmark spending, comes up woefully short was pointed out by Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.):

McCaskill said eliminating congressional earmark spending — estimated at $17 billion annually — cannot offset McCain's proposed tax cuts.

"That's a huge amount of money, but it's not even a drop in the bucket to pay for $3.5 trillion in tax cuts," she said. "So, every time he throws up earmarks and he's asked how he's going to pay for it, he knows he's being disingenuous, he knows he's not being forthcoming."

It'sa position that McCain's own chief economic advisor also holds - as divulged in a forthcoming book. Douglas Holtz-Eakin believes that "you’re going to have to raise taxes whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat or a Martian" but the McCain campaign campaign isn't taking his advice and he isn't speaking out in public about that because "“It’s the brand and you don’t dilute the brand.”

Dick Cheney may be the least introspective man in history.

Dick Cheney, the US vice president, broadened his attack on Russia late on Saturday, directly challenging Vladimir Putin’s view of history and warning that his government could “not have it both ways” by using “brute force” and still hoping to build economic progress.

Form anyone else, the hypocrisy would be breathtaking - as Bush's administration continues to push its military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq and neo-whatevers calls for more wars with Iran, Syria, Russia ... to say nothing of any "humanitarian" excuse they can come up with for armed intervention. For Cheney its par for the course and everyone expects it.

Business leaders and politicians attending the conference had expected an uncompromising assault by Mr Cheney. But some said it only highlighted a sense of exasperation by a departing administration that had failed in its own diplomacy toward Russia, and the acute differences between Washington and Europe.

[José Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission,] also appeared to want to diminish the role of the US in resolving the conflict in Georgia, telling the Financial Times: “The hope for peace is the EU.”

“I’ve not seen any proposals coming from any parts of the world apart from the peace proposal put forward by president Sarkozy on behalf of the EU,” he said.

Speaking later to reporters, Mr Barroso said: “We are interested in having constructive relations with Russia. It is important to note what we need. We need cool heads, not a cold war and this is the basic message.”

From all we've heard so far a McCain-Palin administration would simply repeat all the mistakes of the Bush-Cheney one and America's reputation would continue it's downslide as foreign policy failure piled on failure.

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McCain's Supreme Court position, in pop-ups

Joe Biden's ability to out straight talk the faux-maverick is definitely an asset for him. He sees what's important right now and isn't afraid to put it plainly.

Biden said U.S. President George W. Bush’s two conservative appointees — Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito — have pushed the nation’s highest court far to the right.

This, Biden charged, has threatened civil liberties and set back efforts to desegregate schools and obtain equal pay for women.

“Other than ending the war in Iraq, the single most significant thing that Barack Obama can do — and I hope I’ll be able to he help him — will be to determine who the next members of the Supreme Court are going to be.”

... During the next four years, Biden said, citing life expectancy estimates, there may be as many as three vacancies on the nine-member court.

“It’s not merely the woman’s right to choose (to have an abortion) which is at stake,” Biden told a mostly female crowd of several hundred people.

“It’s whether or not you are going to be able to have a fair shot at a fair wage,” Biden said. “It’s whether or not you are going to able to demand that you are treated equally in every aspect of your life.”

Those PUMAs who have said they'll support McCain would do well to reflect on Biden's words and McCains.

When National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru asked McCain whether he admires any Supreme Court justice in particular, he answered “of course, Antonin Scalia…I admire how articulate he is, but I also from everything I’ve seen admire Roberts as well.”

Dave Schuler at Outside The Beltway:

... like us, Russia is quite paranoid. Or, as Woody Allen once quipped, what’s a three syllable word beginning with ‘P’ that means you think that everybody’s against you? Answer: perceptive.

Dave argues that the Bush administration simply went along "fat, dumb, and happy" with the Clinton Administration's policy of making clear to Russia that there had only been one winner of the Cold War and I think there's a lot of truth in that, although the Bush hawks have taken it to a whole new level. But as Clinton-era hawks commenting on the Georgia crisis have reminded us, they don't really believe in compromise and diplomacy. While in domestic politics "It's Clinton's Fault" doesn't hold water 8 years later, in foreign policy, where other nations see "America under successive leaders" while Americans see "the Clinton and Bush administrations", 8 years is just enough time to put a good hoppy head on the home-brew of resentment.

The real problem, however, is that we're in danger of turning that perception into one of "three successive American leaders".

Jerry Wexler, RIP: I'm proud and grateful that Jerry was a friend of mine, beginning the day in 1975 he called me, out of the blue, and said, "I like the way you sing. Let's make a record." I couldn't have been more surprised and thrilled if I'd received a phone call from God. I'd grown up listening to Jerry Wexler-produced records. He's one of the reasons I'm a musician. He took me to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and we did an album for Warner Brothers. Being around Jerry was a constant joy. He was a walking encyclopedia of popular American music, especially R&B and jazz. Aside from his important contributions as a genuine musical pioneer, and his unique talents as a producer, he was a wonderful raconteur, a man of exquisite taste, a tough businessman, but a gentleman, and a soft touch for musicians.

I could ask him something like, "tell me about Solomon Burke..." and he'd do an hour of lively, informative and often hilarious commentary on that subject and related topics, one story sparking another. I spent countless hours with him in New York before and after our project, in Alabama while we were recording, and on many occasions in the succeeding 30 years, pestering him to talk about his life in music, which he was always happy to do. I learned a lot. About his experiences with everyone from Ray Charles, to Willie Nelson, to Wilson Pickett, to Aretha Franklin, to Bob Dylan, and on and on. The last time I spoke with him several weeks ago, I opened the conversation by asking how he was doing. "How the hell you think I'm doing," he replied..."I'm 91...!!" What an honor it was for me to have had the opportunity to work with Jerry Wexler. I lost a friend. American music lost one of the greats.

Thought Theater: Compare & Contrast: Family Values and the 2008 election

Frameshop: What America needs to hear about Jerome Corsi, and the denialists riding the slime machine.

Pam's House Blend: Do your homework or Teach might pop a cap in your ass.

The Big Picture: Financial Innovation

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BEIJING - AUGUST 10: President of the United States, George W. Bush holds up the American Flag the wrong way before wife Laura Bush instructs him to turn it around at the swimming arena at the National Aquatics Center during day 2 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 10, 2008 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

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