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I would suggest sending this to anyone who thinks Rudy is competent. Many of you may know this stuff... but this video is short and would be great to send your friends and family who may not quite understand this...

http://therealrudy.org/

 The fact that he laughs when asked about the location of the command center... and that people died because of him is really quite disturbing... 

This morning, ten major U.S. businesses and four national environmental organizations issued a joint report, A Call to Action (pdf file), calling on the federal government to quickly pass strong national legislation to cut global warming pollution.

You can watch the press conference live this morning on CSPAN at 11:30am Eastern. You will also be able to watch it online at CSPAN.org.

The companies involved in today's announcement are well-known Fortune 500 corporations: Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, Florida Power and Light, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, Pacific Gas & Electric, and PNM Resources.

They have joined Environmental Defense, the World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and Natural Resources Defense Council to form an unprecedented alliance -- the United States Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP).

In today's announcement, the partners pledged to work together to support six recommendations for national action:

Tom Vilsack is running for president.

The Iowa governor plans to formally launch his bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination today, one of his top political aides said Wednesday.

Vilsack, who leaves office in January, will file papers today to establish his presidential campaign committee, aides said. The step marks the first official move by any politician among the large field of Democrats and Republicans weighing campaigns for president.

RICHMOND -- An estimated 200 votes, all of them in Isle of Wight County, remained uncounted early today at mid-day as election workers began reviewing the results of Virginia's cliffhanger Senate race, state leaders said.

Jean Jensen, secretary of the state board of elections, said the remaining 2,442 precincts have reported their vote counts. The number of untallied ballots is well below the 7,312-vote lead that Democrat Jim Webb holds over incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen.

The Senate race is expected to be Virginia's third statewide election recount in the Commonwealth's history. Attorney General Bob McDonnell was elected last year by a 360-vote margin after a recount. In 1989, former Gov. Douglas Wilder was declared the victor after a recount.

Jensen said a computer malfunction in Isle of Wight has delayed a final vote count for that county.

"The votes are fine," she said. "It's just the machines are locked up. The votes are in there."

The precinct in limbo has 383 registered voters, said William Bell, secretary of the county's electoral board. He said turnout for the county was about 57 percent, meaning the number of uncounted votes should be around 200.

Because the results show Webb winning by less than 1 percent -- 0.31 percent to be exact -- Allen will have the opportunity to request a recount.

The Republican may file a request with Richmond courts after the State Board of Elections certifies the final vote on Nov. 27. That means the final result of the race could remain unresolved until December.

Still uncounted are an estimated 2,000 "provisional votes," ballots filled out by people who could not be confirmed on Tuesday as legally registered voters. Jensen said about 4,000 provisional votes were reviewed in last year's recount for the attorney general race, and only 700 of them were determined to be legal votes.

Also, some bad robo-calls went out from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in places like New London and Old Saybrook. DCCC spokesman Bill Burton confirms the problem, which directed people to their primary polling place, which is different from the general election polling place. He says the calls were stopped as soon as the problem was brought to their attention, corrected, and then resumed with the correct information. He believes "a small number" of the thousands of robo-calls being made in Connecticut were incorrect. - MSNBC

Well, I fin'ly started thinkin' straight
When I run outa things to investigate.
Couldn't imagine doin' anything else,
So now I'm sittin' home investigatin' myself!
Hope I don't find out anything . . . hmm, great God!" - Dylan

From NBC's Doug Adams and the "Make Your Vote Count" team
There were long lines this morning in Denver outside some polling places, where hundreds lined up to wait. Among them was Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter, who spent several hours waiting in a line outside a voting center in Washington Park in Denver.

We talked with Alton Dillard, the spokesman for the Denver City Election Commission, and it appears that the problem has to do with the electronic "pollbook" and not the voting machines themselves. Pollbooks are the electronic connections that link precincts to the city's master list of registered voters.

Similar problems with this type of "electronic pollbook" caused massive problems in Maryland's Montgomery County during the September primary.

Voters were slowed up when they checked into the voting center because the pollbooks experienced system slowness. The poll workers apparently called into the county elections office to check on individual voters, which created larger lines. However, the precincts were all equipped with Adobe PDF versions of the entire city's poll listing. When asked why those were not used, the spokesman admitted: "Good question."

Voting experts are watching Denver closely this year, in part because the city is implementing a new system of "vote centers" this year. They have eliminated more than 400 neighborhood precincts and folded them into 55 "vote centers." These larger vote centers are designed to allow people to vote anywhere within the city - instead of having to go their local neighborhood precinct. They generally are located in high-traffic areas such as shopping malls.

As Kim Brace, our election expert, puts it: Using these vote centers for more than 350,000 registered voters in Denver is "like putting a full stream of water through a small funnel."

Richard Davies, a business consultant, said, "I voted at Wellshire Presbyterian Church for 15 years and was in and out in 20 minutes each time. Only the city of Denver can break something that doesn't need fixing."

The problem centered on computer registration, poll workers said. They had 16 ballot booths but only four registration booths.

Election officials said computers went down at the Syracuse Voting Plaza and by 8:05 a.m., another problem had arisen at the Risen Christ Voting Center.

Voters in suburban areas seemed to be experiencing fewer delays.

The headquarters for Jay Fawcett's campaign for Colorado's 5th Congressional District was vandalized overnight and a death threat - the third such threat - was also emailed to Fawcett. Both incidents have been reported to the police.

As voters headed to the polls, Fawcett campaign volunteers arriving at campaign offices were greeted with a vile "Skunk" aroma, making it virtually impossible to conduct work there. The campaign is expecting more than 200 people to come through the offices today to help with Get Out The Vote and Poll Watching efforts.

"Don't let these hooligans deter you from exercising your Constitutional right to vote," said Fawcett. "It's time to take a stand against these attacks."

This is the second time the Fawcett Campaign has been vandalized. Last Tuesday the Campaign Finance Director's car was covered in the skunk smell, while parked out front of the El Paso County Republican Office.

"I find it disgusting that, as we are fighting for Democracy in Iraq, people are besmirching Democracy here in Colorado Springs," said Fawcett Campaign Manager Wanda James. "Death threats and childish illegal activities will not deter us from getting out the vote to victory today."

I recently delivered a column on the current administration's abuse of the NSA for domestic-spying purposes. Unfortunately, most of my detractors never made an attempt to address the underlying facts, or to understand the argument being presented. The majority of those e-mails began with statements along the lines of "you're an idiot!" and went on to make assertions about my politics based on what they believed to have read in the column.

Throughout history, leaders both good and bad have been adept at creating "dragons." To provide but a few examples in Western culture, the Crusades were about Muslims being in control of Jerusalem, so the popes at the time created the Muslim dragons. Hitler had the Jews. Reagan had the Evil Empire. Bush started his presidency with the Axis of Evil, until of course Osama bin Laden became an issue; when he couldn't catch him, Saddam Hussein became the dragon. When his policies are attacked, there is the Liberal Media or Activist Judges. Radical Islam has The Great Satan. Certain American commentators last year had the "War on Christmas."

Would you be defending the NSA's domestic spying if Hillary Clinton were president?

To begin busting up the dumb system we have for selecting presidents, a bipartisan group will open shop this week at Unity08.com. This Internet-based third party is spearheaded by three veterans of the antique 1976 campaign: Democrats Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon helped get Jimmy Carter elected; Republican Doug Bailey did media for Gerald Ford before launching the political TIP SHEET Hotline. They are joined by the independent former governor of Maine, Angus King, and a collection of idealistic young people who are also tired of a nominating process that pulls the major party candidates to the extremes. Their hope: to get even a fraction of the 50 million who voted for the next American Idol to nominate a third-party candidate for president online and use this new army to get him or her on the ballot in all 50 states. The idea is to go viral--or die. "The worst thing that could happen would be for a bunch of old white guys like us to run this," Jordan says.

Unity08 is a group of citizens deeply concerned that the wheels have come off our political system, that the American Dream is slipping away, and that time is short to get things back on track.

We are of all ages, backgrounds, colors and beliefs and from both parties:

Some of us have been involved in political campaigns at the state and national levels and served in high government positions.
Others of our leadership group have never been active in political life but have been highly successful in the private sector, active in the non-profit world and in other walks of American life.
Still others of our leadership group are students, who are concerned that the agenda of special interests is coming before the national interest.

Unity08 believes that neither of today's major parties reflects the aspirations, fears or will of the majority of Americans. Both have polarized and alienated the people. Both are unduly influenced by single-issue groups. Both are excessively dominated by money.

For most of the 20th Century, the contest for the U.S. presidency was waged over those "in the middle." Recent Presidential elections, however, have not been focused on the middle but on the turnout of each party's special interest groups - with each party's "base" representing barely ten percent of the American people.

We believe that, while the leaders of both major parties are well intentioned people, they are trapped in a flawed system - and that the two major parties are today simply neither relevant to the issues and challenges of the 21st Century nor effective in addressing them.

As a result, most Americans have not been enthusiastic about the choices for President in recent elections, the key issues they ran on, or the manner in which the campaigns were conducted.

Therefore Unity08 will act to assure that an alternative ticket is presented to the American voters in 2008.

Indeed, if the reform needed is "lobbying reform," these are reasonable solutions. But, the term "Congressional ethics reform" would have framed a problem of a much different nature, a problem with Congressmen. And it would allow very different reforms to count as solutions. After all, lobbyists are powerless if there's nobody to accept a free meal, fly on a private plane, play a round of golf in the Bahamas and, most importantly, accept the political contributions lobbyists raise on their behalf from special-interests with billions of dollars in business before the federal Government.

Perhaps most pointedly, the "immigration problem" frame blocks an understanding of this issue as a cheap labor issue. The undocumented immigrants allow employers to pay low wages, which in turn provide the cheap consumer goods we find at WalMart and McDonalds. They are part of a move towards the cheap lifestyle, where employers and consumers find any way they can to save a dollar, regardless of the human cost.

The Wall Street Journal is opining about a possible Gore run for president in 2008. I'm just curious what you all think about that - good idea, bad idea, not sure? Also, be sure to indicate how you felt about Gore the first time around in 2000.

As for me, I wished Gore had Clinton's personality, but at the time I also remember thinking there was a part of Gore's seriousness that was good and necessary after the Clinton scandals. Still, it seemed that Gore, like Kerry, had a real problem bouncing back and forth between his advisers, never really quite finding his own voice.

Anyway, I'm intrigued by the idea of Gore running again. A friend the other day - or maybe it was one of the folks at the AMERICAblog coffee meet-up we had in NYC last week - said that maybe this is why Gore has been laying low the past five years, so he can come back on the scene "new and improved" for the 2008 election.

It's an interesting idea. And I might just support it. I wasn't thrilled on Gore running again right after he lost, but now...

NEW ORLEANS -- Block after block, neighborhood after neighborhood, tens of thousands of hurricane-ravaged houses here rot in the sun, still waiting to be gutted or bulldozed. Now officials have decided where several million tons of their remains will be dumped: in man-made pits at the swampy eastern edge of town, out by the coffee-roasting plant and the space-shuttle factory and the big wildlife refuge.

But more than a thousand Vietnamese-American families live less than two miles from the edge of the new landfill. And they are far from pleased at having the moldering remains of a national disaster plunked down nearby, alongside the canal that flooded their neighborhood when Hurricane Katrina surged through last year.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran on Monday denied Baghdad's accusation that Iranian soldiers had shelled Kurdish positions on the Iraqi border and ventured five kilometers (three miles) into Iraq to attack Kurdish rebels.

Iran's Kurdish territories along its border with Iraq have simmered with unrest since July. Several members of Iran's security forces and Kurds have died in a string of street protests and gunfights.

Iraq's Defense Ministry on Sunday said Iranian troops had crossed the border to attack positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on April 21. Iran accuses Pezhak, PKK's Iranian wing, of killing several of its soldiers.

"Such reports are denied," Iran's government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said, when asked about the Iraqi accusation and a report by the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network that Iran was mustering troops in Kurdish areas.

Iran's mountainous western borders are always heavily militarized because of ethnic tensions and smuggling routes.

Any breaches by forces from Shi'ite Muslim Iran are liable to fuel accusations from Iraq's Sunni politicians that Tehran is meddling in Iraq's affairs.