New York has a pre-primary filing deadline for candidates tonight -- and wouldn't you know, the Orange to Blue list has three New York candidates on it: Dan Maffei, Eric Massa, and Jon Powers.

Maffei's fundraising has been dominating his Republican opponent for this open seat. But Massa and Powers face tough opponents. In the primary, Powers faces Jack Davis, a self-funding multi-millionaire who's engaged in a string of dirty campaign tactics and who on the issues is exactly the kind of Democrat we don't want to see elected. Meanwhile, for the general election, Massa faces Shotgun Randy Kuhl -- and if a Republican incumbent who's threatened his wife with a shotgun doesn't make you want to win, I don't know what will.

Powers' need is immediate: He faces a so-called Democratic opponent with bottomless pockets and a willingness to sink to the bottom of the slime pit in campaigning. We do not want Jack Davis in the House at all, let alone with a (D) next to his name.

As for Massa, he doesn't just face a Republican incumbent, he's being advertised against by Freedom's Watch. They've been on the radio in the district for a while, and a couple weeks ago the DCCC made an answering buy -- but Massa's campaign recently heard that Freedom's Watch is inquiring about buying TV time. Massa will need a lot of help to be able to answer Freedom's Watch].

These candidates are true friends of the netroots. They attend Netroots Nation, they post diaries here -- but more importantly, they're with us on the issues. We couldn't do better than to put Maffei, Massa, and Powers in Congress.

If you have a few dollars to spare, today is a great time to give since tonight's filing gives these candidates another chance to show big donors and the DCCC that they're doing what it takes and deserve further support.

Republicans do a lot of complaining about liberals in the entertainment industry...but when campaign season rolls around, they're never shy about using those people's music as theme songs.

From Ronald Reagan and "Born in the USA" to George W. Bush and "Still the One," there's a rich tradition of Republicans being called out by Democratic musicians unthrilled at seeing their work used to promote politicians they oppose -- and John McCain has done his part to add to the list.

First it was John Mellencamp:

When the liberal rocker found out his songs were being played at events for Republican John McCain's presidential campaign, Mellencamp's publicist sent a letter that questioned the campaign's playlist.

"Are you sure you want to use his music to promote Senator McCain's efforts?" according to the letter sent to McCain's campaign on Monday. "Logic says that the facts might prove to be an embarrassment, were they to be circulated widely."

Then, in non-musical entertainment, Mike Myers made McCain pull a Wayne's World clip from one of his attack ads.

And now it's Jackson Browne:

Singer, songwriter, liberal activist and now John McCain scourge Jackson Browne filed a lawsuit today against the presumptive GOP nominee and the Republican Party for failing to obtain a license to use one of his songs in a television commercial.

The song, "Running on Empty," has been used by the Ohio Republican Party (not the McCain campaign) apparently against Browne's approval. The music icon also claims that in doing so, the false perception is created that he is endorsing McCain's candidacy.

Seriously? Jackson Browne? Are there any musicians more identified with not merely liberal but left politics than Jackson Browne? I guess they could've gone with Pete Seeger, but beyond that I'm hard pressed to think of anyone else.

All I know is, if I were John Rich and I'd gone to the trouble of writing a song for McCain and humiliating myself by playing in front of a laughably small audience, I'd be pretty pissed.

UPDATE: Newsweek reports that McCain's also run afoul of Frankie Valli, ABBA, Orleans (that's Democratic Rep. John Hall's band), and Chuck Berry, in the same manner. He's a regular serial scofflaw, this John McCain. Why does he hate private property so much? [Kagro X]

Abortion and reproductive rights are among the areas that have given John McCain his reputation as a maverick -- and may even win the fierce competition for which part of that maverick reputation is least deserved. People who pay attention have known for a while that he was not, as some seem to believe, a pro-choice vote in waiting. But the myth has persisted.

It'll be interesting to see if the major article on McCain's record on abortion, written by Sarah Blustain, published at The New Republic, and supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, can puncture the myth. You knew McCain had a temper? Wait until you read about him screaming at clinic staff and patients because a clinic had information about federal funding for non-abortion-related reproductive health funding. You remember that in 1999 he said Roe v. Wade shouldn't be overturned, and you think his pro-repeal position now is the pander? Read about his decades of conversations with friends and colleagues in which he made it more than clear that his opposition to abortion is non-negotiable.

But most of all, look at the votes:

During his political career, McCain has participated in 130 reproductive health-related votes on Capitol Hill; of these, he voted with the anti-abortion camp in 125. McCain has consistently backed rights for the unborn, voting to cover fetuses under the State Children's Health Insurance Program and supporting the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which allowed a "child in utero" to be recognized as a legal victim of a crime. He has voted in favor of the global gag rule, which prevents U.S. funds from going to international family-planning clinics that use their own money to perform abortions, offer information about abortion, or take a pro-choice stand. And he has voted to appoint half a dozen anti-abortion judges to the federal bench, as well as Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. During the Bork hearings, McCain attacked the Court's creation of a right to privacy in Roe v. Wade: "Whether one is pro-or anti-abortion," McCain said in an October 1987 hearing, "it is difficult to argue that the Court's opinion is not constitutionally suspect."

Some of these votes were, politically speaking, no-brainers for anyone vaguely in the pro-life camp. But McCain also joined efforts supported only by the radical wing of his party. He voted, for instance, with only one-fifth of the Senate to remove family-planning grants from a 1988 spending bill and with only 18 senators that same year against allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions in cases of rape or incest.

In 1994, the year after abortion provider David Gunn was killed outside a Florida clinic, McCain voted with 29 members of the Senate against establishing penalties for violent or threatening interference outside abortion clinics. Many solidly pro-life Republicans--Mitch McConnell, Kit Bond, John Danforth--voted in favor of the bill, called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). "We tried to get as many co-sponsors as we could, and we postured the thing as anti-vigilante violence," recalls Judy Appelbaum, a Washington lawyer who was counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy at the time and the lead Hill staffer on the bill. "We argued that, even if you oppose abortion, you should not condone these actions." According to Appelbaum, law enforcement officials, newspaper editorialists, health care providers, and law-and-order politicians all supported the bill. "There were a number of very anti-choice senators who voted for FACE," she says, "and [McCain] wasn't one of them." Instead, McCain joined senators like Orrin Hatch and Jesse Helms in opposition.

Every hint McCain has ever given that he will do anything but work immediately to restrict abortion rights to his maximum ability is a pander, an attempt to shore up that maverick image at moments when it was to his electoral benefit to run center rather than hard right. These punitive, absolutist anti-abortion votes are the real McCain.

This week's mini-push on the Orange to Blue list has already gotten Annette Taddeo over our goal of 200 contributions. But as of this writing, Jon Powers is just 17 short of 200. With less than 2 hours to go, will you step up for Jon?

As Trapper John wrote in introducing Powers to the Orange to Blue list,

Jon Powers has earned a spot on Orange To Blue because he's the model of of a modern patriot. He's a soldier who fought in Iraq, saw the flaws of the war up close, and resolved to make it better by helping out the kids who were most affected. He's a guy who stuck with his hometown through the bad times, and who gets excited when talking about the potential for building it into something great again. He's an optimist who believes that government can be a real force for good, both at home and in the world -- and he believes that the key is empowering regular Americans to get involved. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Powers campaign is his "call to service" -- a plan that would address the critical shortages in the nursing and teaching professions, and which would foster service and volunteerism in all walks of life.  It's the product of a candidate who spends a lot of time thinking about how we can make our country work better -- not just about getting elected.

Powers is also running against a model of the kind of Democrat we don't want to see elected in Jack Davis, a former Republican who's trying to buy the nomination.  By contrast, Powers is an engaged Daily Kos contributor who attended Netroots Nation not just to speak and leave, but to hang out with convention attendees, just talking. Let's help him get to Congress to represent us all, and the values we share.

Update: 201! Let's go celebrate!!!

If you struggle with shyness as I have, yet simultaneously value community as I do, the internet can be a great place. There are people to talk to any time of day or night, and no one can tell if you have trouble making eye contact. But online politics raises questions about efficacy -- what can we do beyond sending money to good candidates and contacting our representatives on the issues (both worthwhile activities, but hardly transformative)? And online community raises questions about possibility -- is it even real community if people don't meet, can leave without notice or pressure to stay, can in general control the degree of their interactions?

Those questions are far too big to answer here and now, but they're important to keep in mind when considering the impact of the three years of YearlyKos/Netroots Nation. Because what does it mean that we meet each other in this form? What gets done and what is left undone? There are more analytical and more critical answers out there, other angles to think about and lenses to look through. But upon coming home from Austin, most important to me was the rich experience of community I had while there. Though I'd slept for a total of 6 or 7 out of the previous 48 hours, on Sunday night I stayed up chatting on IM with a friend who had been there, neither of us willing to put the separation of sleep between ourselves and the weekend. That kind of desperation to stay in a moment has only happened to me once or twice before, and in every case it proved to be a pivotal moment in my life, and specifically in my experience of community.

In these moments, we are altered by the people around us not as individuals but by something greater; community, I believe, is more than the sum of its parts. It is a force with the potential to draw the best out of us and tamp down the worst. (It also has the potential to oppress us or to encourage excess.) One of the qualifications for movement status that the netroots, or online politics broadly defined, are often seen to lack is that of a shared network or pre-existing shared identity. The canonical movements have been organized around race, class, or gender identities, and the netroots does not have that. Nor do we have one single overriding issue to define us. Yet we are developing the sense of interconnection and responsibility to one another so characteristic of social movements. This emergence of community is a key step in the netroots achieving its potential as a genuine movement rather than a collection of individuals with some common interests.

After the first YearlyKos, Chris Bowers wrote:

The most popular I have ever been in my entire life, easily, was when I was at Yearly Kos. Nothing else even comes close.

Looking around at that event, it didn't seem to me that he was the only one. It looked, in fact, like almost everyone there was having that experience, or something close to it. People arrived already feeling accepted and part of something, able both to draw on the identities and relationships they'd established online and to develop new ones. There was a kind of ecstatic feeling to it -- one I didn't fully participate in, but could feel in the air around me.

Two years later, people's relationships have deepened, so that while you still see plenty of first in-person meetings in the halls and lobbies of Netroots Nation, you also see people whose lives have become intertwined, with their shared participation in Daily Kos or other parts of the netroots providing the core to friendships (and, in some cases, romances) as important as those they have from any other parts of their lives.

I watch this happening in other people, and I feel it in myself, this being wrapped up in a multi-layered community. It contains people I haven't yet met in person and will only ever speak to briefly; people I see once or twice a year and occasionally email in addition to our conversations on the site; on up to my own core of people I'm not sure I could live without. We each of us, as we become part of the netroots community, have several kinds of relationships within it. You may never meet my dearest friend here, and vice versa, but we're all part of the same thing.

I get the thrill of recognition of a username, or facing a woman as tall as I am and being reminded that we have discussed our shared height online. Or the person I met last year and have since followed in their diaries about volunteering for Obama. Dozens of little interactions accrue, weighted with the meaning of our shared political purpose and the network of relationships in which they occur. And this weight is added, too, to our closer relationships within the circle, the people with whom my shared conversation is always midstream, who I would plan any travel around seeing and disregard the basic need of sleep to be with just a few hours more.

In each of those thrills, small and large, is a bit of what's needed for that movement cohesion. That we care about each other and each other's opinions creates the likelihood of some serious fun when we get together, but it also creates the conditions for social pressure to do more, stay connected, and understand ourselves as part of something bigger than our own actions.

All of this makes me, makes each of us, a little better and stronger -- talking to people we never would otherwise, but now are connected to through this community; volunteering for a campaign because we have new role models, and friends to be accountable to; learning from each other; tempering each other's excessive optimism and raising each other up from defeatism. That's not to say it's perfect. It's to say that in community we have a potent force to work with in changing the country's politics and, along the way, ourselves.

FiveThirtyEight suggests that "placing more emphasis on foreign policy may not be a winner for Barack Obama -- even if he closes the gap with McCain on the issue" because "You're still giving McCain a sort of home-court advantage by fighting every day over foreign policy, even if you're winning some of the skirmishes."

The jury is still very much out on whether and how much Obama's trip abroad will help him. While Poblano's analysis focuses on the possible effects of Obama polling better, and voters focusing more, on foreign policy, there's another possible long-term effect -- on the media narrative. To this point, Obama has had to endlessly answer media concern about his supposed lack of experience and expertise on foreign policy issues (even as they endlessly give John McCain a pass for apparently boundless ignorance on what's supposed to be his signature issue). What happens if Obama stops having to answer quite so many of those questions? If his foreign policy knowledge and vision are accepted by the media and he doesn't have to spend the next 3 1/2 months playing defense on that issue?

Not to sound like too much of an optimist about the US media, but could Obama's clear success on the world stage change the media narrative just enough to allow him to go on the offense more on energy and economic and environmental issues? Those are issues he should own, but hasn't been able to devote sufficient attention to yet as he, appallingly, is forced to defend himself against the view that he doesn't know as much about foreign policy as someone who doesn't know Sunni from Shiite.

We won't know if Obama's trip effects a lasting change in the media narrative, and that kind of shift is not something that will show up directly in polling. But if, having established his authority on foreign policy and ability to stand on a world stage, Obama could simply move on to the other issues he needs to win, it could represent a real change in the ground on which this election is fought.

It's ironic for me to be writing a diary for a series called "friday night at the movies," since probably the only time I'm less likely to go to the movies than friday night is saturday night. Because since I've been an adult, 90% of the time I go to the movies to be anti-social.

I don't like crowded movie theaters. I don't like having a stranger sitting next to me or actually within about 15 seats of me and I really don't like having some idiot behind me talking through the movie. (Legend has it that teenagers are loud during movies, but I find late-middle-aged to elderly people to be the worst by far.) I want to be sitting in the middle of an ocean of empty seats, and I often choose my movie-going times to make that likely. If I can go in the middle of a weekday afternoon, I will. I'll go late on a weeknight. I'll wait until a movie has been out for a while and isn't drawing big crowds.

Very occasionally I'll go to the movies on a weekend night with a group of friends. I sort of don't see the point -- if I'm with my friends, I can think of better things to do than sit quietly in a dark room -- but of course going to the movies on a weekend is A Thing, so you do it. Mostly I go alone.

Emptywheel has Karl Rove's answers to questions from the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee -- you know, the committee before which Rove won't actually go to testify. It's written questions, no follow-ups, so basically Rove's dream scenario.

Promising follow-up, emptywheel offers this initial reading:

Smith repeatedly asks Rove whether or not he ever communicated with:

Department of Justice officials, State of Alabama officials, or any other individual about the investigation, indictment, potential prosecution, prosecution, conviction, or sentencing of Governor Siegelman

And repeatedly, Rove answers that he has never directly or indirectly communicated with:

Justice Department or Alabama officials [] about the investigation, indictment, potential prosecution, prosecution, conviction, or sentencing of Governor Siegelman

Rove would not make the same denials about talking to "any other individuals" he did about DOJ and Alabama officials.

Now to be fair to old Turdblossom, Rove does add this caveat, repeatedly:

nor have I asked any other individual to communicate about these matters on my behalf

But that's not the same thing as answering whether he spoke to anyone about it all.

Karl Rove being less than fully honest. Big surprise. We know emptywheel (and Kagro X, and other bloggers) will follow up on this. Will Congress?

So we can look forward to seeing those media narratives that Obama is in trouble with Jewish voters while Joe Lieberman is their voice in the Senate repudiated, right?

Among the most high-profile Jews in Congress, Lieberman is viewed far more unfavorably than the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a new poll. Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent in a favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. As for Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view him unfavorably.

The findings were released as part of a recent survey of American Jews by the new progressive pro-Israel group J Street. They seem to upturn some of this year's conventional political wisdom.

The survey does show Obama has room for improvement with Jewish voters, but it's clear that the notion that he's in real trouble there is absurd. As we've said here repeatedly.

(h/t Street Prophets)

Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)
By Jared Bernstein
Berrett Koehler
San Francisco: 2008
225 pages; $26.95

The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker
By Steven Greenhouse
Knopf
New York: 2008.
384 pages; $25.95

This year's polite term for the economic situation of so many Americans appears to be "squeeze," if the titles of these two books are any guide. Despite the similar terminology and theme, though, they provide very different types of account of the American economy, and even more so different levels of explanations for why what's going on is going on and what forces might be responsible.

Jared Bernstein has written an economics book for the general reader. Crunch is organized for the most part into two-to-three-page answers to laypeople's questions such as "What's it going to take for large-scale health reform to occur?" and "Seems like we're forever blowing bubbles. What is an economic bubble, why are they bad, and can they be avoided?" Answers explain basic economic principles, often critiquing dominant beliefs in the field of economics -- revealing unacknowledged ideological slants in economic analyses generally delivered as fact. The book therefore delivers a number of lessons, including the basic factual answers to questions, this critique of the field of economics, and an accompanying discussion of how the nation's economy is shaped by power relations. Bernstein's book is a valuable resource, accessibly written (if anything, I sometimes found the jocular asides and humorous tangents a bit overdone) and organized to provide the reader with concise talking points on the issues.

Where Bernstein seeks to explain the economy, with an eye to its macro-level organization and the immediate effects of that upon individuals, Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze is descriptive, shying away from such attempts at broader analysis or explanation.

The Greenhouse book is depressing in two ways. One is a credit to its author; the other is not. The reporting is fine-grained and moving, telling the stories of dozens of American workers who have been "squeezed" -— abused, underpaid, overworked, downsized, and degraded. The reporting work is extraordinary; these are stories that everyone should know by heart until the revulsion that knowledge stirs banishes any more such realities from this nation. The success of Greenhouse’s reporting makes reading the book a miserable experience. What’s been done to American workers over the past few decades is appalling.

As stellar as the reporting involved is, and as complete a picture of the day-to-day indignities and oppressions of many American workplaces as it provides, ultimately Greenhouse’s failure to confront the implications of his reporting is nearly as depressing as the stories he tells. He opens the book with this question:

Not long after I began peering inside the nation’s workplaces as labor correspondent for the New York Times, I was taken aback by what I often found there—squalid treatment, humbling indignities, relentless penny-pinching. The United States may see itself as the City on the Hill, but many of its citizens labor in dismal swamps. Why, I kept asking myself, are there so many unseemly, even shocking things taking place inside the workplaces of the world’s richest nation?

And then, for hundreds of pages, he refuses to provide a direct answer it is more than clear he knows.

Time and time again Greenhouse painstakingly details how a major corporate employer lays off productive workers so that financial analysts will tell shareholders to be happy, how orders go down through the ranks for regional managers to squeeze individual store managers, who pass that squeeze down to cashiers and stockroom workers in the form of hours illegally deleted from timesheets, forced time off the clock so that a worker won’t be eligible for overtime, harassment and intimidation for any of a hundred petty reasons that will make a worker’s life miserable for the sake of a few cents more profit for the corporation. And time and time again, Greenhouse backs off of connecting the dots he has so painstakingly mapped.

In 9 of 10 stories he recounts, human misery is something attributable to corporate policy and corporate greed. It is not an accident, it is not a subject of regret. It is intentionally, rigorously inflicted, with wanton disregard for the law and for any sense of a morality based in anything but money.  

Yet in this book Greenhouse will not step back and admit he knows it. Though throughout the book, the searing indignities and vicious abuses come at the hands of employers, when it comes time to draw conclusions, to suggest what could be done to improve the lot of America’s workers, his most strongly-phrased suggestions are directed at unions. Oh, he suggests more extensive and effective government regulation, and universal healthcare, but in a world in which "the typical CEO earns 369 times as much as the average worker, up from 131 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976," it is union leaders whose salaries Congress should take action to limit. Having clearly shown that it is corporations that most need to change their practices to improve the lot of American workers, Greenhouse is unwilling to suggest that they be confronted in any meaningful way.

In other words, this is a book written by a reporter beholden to traditional media notions of objectivity and neutrality. The facts have a liberal bias, so the analysis has to correct for that. It is a sad commentary on reporting that a book written by someone who has, in his role as labor reporter at the New York Times, been one of the most important sources of information on work and workers in this country.

Reading Greenhouse left me desperate to read something that took these questions on, not just detailing the effects of inequality but analyzing it as something actively produced. Bernstein's book provided some measure of that, but precisely its accessible, convenient organization into brief, focused discussions of particular questions makes it more difficult to extract the overarching narratives contained within. For that, Bernstein's earlier book All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy might provide a more straightforward account, as does Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift.

Naturally, in leaving McCain's campaign, Phil Gramm had to blame Democrats. He's such a victim.

It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country," Mr. Gramm said in a statement issued by the campaign. "That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s problems, it hurts the country."

Mr. Gramm, a multimillionaire banker, has been under fire since last week, when he dismissed concerns about the troubled economy by referring to "a mental recession." He also said the United States had become "a nation of whiners," a remark providing fodder for Democrats to portray Republicans as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans.

The Obama campaign declined to apologize for thinking the economic issues needing discussion are not purely psychological.

"The question for John McCain isn’t whether Phil Gramm will continue as chairman of his campaign, but whether he will continue to keep the economic plan that Gramm authored and that represents a continuation of the polices that have failed American families for the last eight years," said Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the campaign of Senator Barack Obama.

Talking to candidates and staffers at Netroots Nation, you can't possibly miss the sense of optimism. And we as Democrats should be optimistic -- there are races out there that you would never have predicted to be competitive, but here we are, looking at possible victory.

But there's something else, too. Even as longshot races are looking good, people on top-tier races know they can't take anything for granted. In her Senate race in New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen has had consistent leads in polling for months now. But when I talked to her daughter Molly (who is blogging her mother's race), she emphasized that they know they have a fight. They know that, in a rematch of the race that saw the blatant lawbreaking of phone jamming in 2002, they face an opponent who will go somewhere below dirty. So no matter what the polls say, the Shaheen team knows they need to keep fighting every day for this victory.

Talking to Orange to Blue candidate Dan Seals I got the same message: It's not just that he knows he's facing a tough race. It's that he doesn't want to see Democrats screw up. Seals clearly feels the optimism of the year, but also the sense of urgency that this election is so important for the future of the country and the world. The stakes are too high to give anything less than the best.

We can't take anything for granted. And we're lucky to have great candidates who know that and are putting in the hard work to win it.

At noon (central time) today, Howard Dean's Register for Change bus tour came to Austin. This was after hitting Crawford earlier in the day, where Dean reported that about 100 people attended the rally.

A couple pictures for you.

Dean's response to the crowd chanting "four more years" (i.e. of Dean as DNC chair) as he began to speak:

Register for Change isn't in Austin only because Netroots Nation is here. This tour is part of the voter registration effort that will aim to get new voters all around the country, even in traditionally red areas. In other words, this is the fifty state strategy in action.

Because I know you're still out there, a note to people who think the mortgage crisis is a personal responsibility issue:

On a recent week, the Douglas County Public Trustee received six new filings for $1 million-plus homes entering the foreclosure process.

And it's not just homes.

Senior centers, office buildings and even churches have been forced to deal with the threat of losing their million- dollar real estate to the lenders, forcing them to scramble to escape foreclosure auctions.

For example, the biggest health club in the metro area, the Lakeshore Athletic Club - Flatiron, was in foreclosure for about six months last year, before the $19 million foreclosure was withdrawn, according to public records. - Rocky Mountain News

Nationally, RealtyTrac shows 261,255 properties received foreclosure notices during May -- a 7 percent increase from the previous month and a 48 percent boost from May 2007.

The report also states one in every 483 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing during the month, the highest monthly foreclosure rate since RealtyTrac began issuing the report in January 2005. - mlive.com

To convince any reasonable person this is a personal responsibility issue, you're going to have to come up with a reason why all of a sudden, in the United States, rich people and poor people and people in between and churches and senior centers and health clubs just all spontaneously became  really irresponsible, on a historic level. Was it in the air, or the water?

Or was it in the lending practices? New rules approved by the Fed offer a few reminders of shady practices widespread enough to be worth banning:

For all mortgages, prime and subprime, the new rules will:

— Prohibit seven misleading advertising practices, including representing that a rate or payment is "fixed" if it will change over the course of the loan.

— Prohibit advertising in which different loans are compared unless all payments and rates are also disclosed.

— Prohibit foreign-language mortgage ads in which required disclosures are presented in English.

— Prohibit a lender from encouraging or coercing an appraiser to misrepresent a home's assessed value.

Misleading advertising, bullshit appraisals...all things mortgage-holders did to themselves, no doubt.

The AFL-CIO is running an ad, featuring Vietnam veteran and retired International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers member Jim Wasser, in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Every vet respects John McCain’s war record. It’s his record in the Senate that I have a problem with.

He wants us to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, just like Bush. That’s money we could use to build schools and roads and create needed jobs here at home. He even took sides with Bush against increasing health care benefits for veterans.

People should let John McCain know. His agenda is not what we need. Not now.

The ad is part of a broader campaign focusing on McCain's poor record on veterans' issues. Last week, unions held kick-off events  in several states, from rallies to roundtable discussions. The media may be willing to keep giving McCain a pass on his opposition to Webb's 21st Century GI Bill and his votes against healthcare for veterans, but America's labor movement, and the millions of veterans it represents, will not be following suit.

Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire:

If the elitist snobs at NHPR and other arugula eating MSM outlets who stole the election for Barack Obama are going to cover fringe movements like PUMA, then I demand they stop censoring the real presidential election conspiracy, encapsulated by my own group, DOPEY:

Dodd, Our President, Every Year

And I won't stop until the MY PERSONAL FAVORITE CANDIDATE gets into the White House, or else! Otherwise, it's McCain for me.

Kinda gets you thinking, doesn't it? What other former-candidate fringe groups are out there?

Brownsox doesn't just cover House and Senate races, he has his finger on the pulse of these groups, and wants us to know about:

My Own Richardson American Nation

Democrats United behind Maximizing Biden's All-Star Status

Clinton Loyalists Overly Distraught

Jacksonian Action Crew for Kucinich's Astonishing Song Stylings

The Perennially Obsessed with Obama Party.

Meanwhile, DavidNYC has had run-ins with members of a different Kucinich group:

Kucinich Running Unites Slackers This Year

And Adam B alerts us to a candidate from the 2004 cycle whose supporters are still loyal to his governing vision:

Graham's Rebels Ordering Additional Notebooks

Democrats certainly are facing a divided party this year. What other highly threatening challenges to party unity have you come across?

Candidates Are Slow to Identify 'Bundlers', by Michael Luo and Christopher Drew.

Fair and balanced opening paragraphs:

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have long been among the most outspoken critics of the influence of money in politics.

Yet records show that in their presidential campaigns, neither has lived up to his promise to fully disclose the identities of his top money collectors who bundle millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

Total paragraphs: 25

Number of names already on Obama's bundler list: 326
Number of names the Obama campaign added to their list prior to this article's publication: 181

Number of paragraphs devoted solely to Obama's failure to provide all bundler names: 16

Number of names already on McCain's bundler list: "Just over 100"
Number the McCain campaign added to their list prior to publication: 0

Number of paragraphs devoted solely to McCain's failure to provide all bundler names: 4

Rough probability this article was conceived and executed as a hit job on Obama: 99%

Most holidays (the meaningful ones, anyway) end up centered around a meal. A holiday meal isn't just food, of course. It's a chance to come together and share, to join in a fellowship that echoes the holy rituals of many religions. Thanksgiving has its turkey, Easter its ham -- and those meals are often eaten with an eye to the meaning of the day.

The Fourth of July meal tends to be a little more raucous. And, be it a picnic or a barbecue, a lot more outdoorsy. But that doesn't mean we don't all have our own traditions around what you eat and how you eat it. Given the nature of the holiday, it seems like what you eat should be somehow American, since that is after all what's being celebrated here. (You could also go for a freedom theme and grill only free-range meats, I guess.) But what's even American? I once went to a party thrown by an Australian woman who asked guests to bring food they considered typically American, and the menu ranged from pancakes to takeout Chinese food.

I'll be honest: my family doesn't do the Fourth. My parents are not holiday people, and when I was a kid, I usually hoped someone would invite me to their family's barbecue. For the last several years, I've usually been at a Sacred Harp singing in Alabama on the Fourth, eating southern picnic food off a thirty-foot concrete table. Fried green tomatoes, pecan pie, all sorts of food like I never grew up on. This year I'm not going to Alabama, but I will be singing on Saturday, so I'm cooking picnic food a day late. I'll be making a pasta salad with a dressing that looks bland and white, but has a zing of garlic and wine. I was going to make my mother's slaw, but the grocery store was sold out of bags of shredded cabbage, so I'm making a taco salad recipe I learned in Alabama. For dessert, those awesome chewy peanut buttery chocolate topped rice krispy treats. And I'll be bringing a gluten-free black forest cake I got at Trader Joe's.

So what about you? What are your traditions -- either the ones you grew up with or the ones you happened into as an adult? Will you be cooking, and will it be outdoors over an open flame? Burgers or barbecue? What's your potato salad recipe? (Seriously, I need a potato salad recipe.) What's your favorite patriotic-themed recipe, and does it match the flag of red, white, and blue jello shooters one Daily Kos contributing editor once created? For once on this site, recipes are welcomed by the diarist.