Bush Gives Head Of State...

Busby/Bilbray CA 50 Hand Recount: w00t!

Filed by Brad Friedman from San Diego…

In a harshly worded statement, the DNC's Voting Rights Institute has issued a statement condeming the adminstration of the recent U.S. House race between Democrat Francine Busby and Republican Brian Bilbray joining a growing national outcry in calling for "a swift and verifiable 'manual count' of all 150,000 ballots cast in California's 50th District's 'bellwether' June 6th special election."

"This is no longer about whether or not Busby or Bilbray won the election on June 6th," the just-issued statement reads, "This is about the importance of verifying the facts related to election and voting machine irregularities in this race and the need to ensure an accurate count of all votes cast in this election so that the electorate may have confidence in the announced results in future elections."

The long-awaited announcement of a position on the matter by the DNC comes at the end of more than a month of outrage from both national and state election integrity organizations, many of whom have declared "No Confidence" in the reported results of the race held to replace jailed Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Bilbray declared himself the winner on election night, and was sworn into office several days later before all votes had been counted and nearly three weeks prior to the election being certified by either state or county officials.

Bush Jokes During Visit to Germany

July 13, 2006 - President laughs about roast pig, leading the band, and a historic church

STRALSUND, Germany (AP) - President Bush was high on the hog in Germany.

Even before he sat down for dinner with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bush commented again and again on how much he looked forward to the 65-pound wild boar that was on the menu.

"I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig," Bush told Merkel during opening remarks at a news conference Thursday.

One German reporter asked Merkel about violence in the Middle East, then asked Bush for his impressions of the region - aside from the pig. Bush cut Merkel off.

"I haven't seen the pig yet," he said with a chuckle, then apologized to Merkel for interrupting. She said she hoped it was already roasting, with six hours until dinner time.

And when a U.S. reporter asked for a follow-up, Bush seemed disappointed by the topic: Iran.

"I thought you were going to ask me about the pig," he said.

Thank You Jane Hamsher

Last night I recieved a rather remarkable gift from Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake. As folks know, whenever I post at the Progressive Blogs, I usually post a link to one of my songs as my personal "message in a bottle." I know some folks are annoyed by this, but one never knows when a funny song or a Love song can catch just one person at just the moment when it's really needed. Last night on my way to bed, I tossed a one liner into a thread about Ned Lamont at FDL and added a link to my Lee Greenwood sendup, as I did at Huffpo, ThinkProgress and Bradblog.

Bradblog, btw is doing some REALLY great work on the Busby/Bilbray CA:50 HAND RECOUNT that will tear the roof off...But I digress...

Literally ready to sign off, I passed by FDL again to see if the Lamont thread was going to be busy. Scrolling down I found that Jane heard the song and had a really good laugh. Good enough apparently that she linked it in the main post. Now, from my computer, (God Bless Broadband!) I had seen Jane at the YearlyKos, chairing the panel with Joe Wilson and Murray Waas. This married grandfather will testify that Jane Hamsher is SMOKIN'!

So I logged out and went to sleep. It was nice to know that I made such an important person smile. But when I logged back on in the morningI had quite a shock. Between 11pm and 4am "Goper's Lament" had been downloaded over 1000 times. It seems that for the first time since I posted my podcast, by 11pm tonight, Folks will have downloaded 2 Gigabytes of music from my website in a single day.

Thanks Jane, I'm glad I got the chance to make you laugh.