If you do not get Current TV you can watch Keith here:

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

First I want to apologize for not being able to keep up with writing, I was busier than I really expected to be and it was a lot more walking, so I was pretty tired at the end of the day. There is a lot to report, some of it was positive, at least from the perspective of our ability to improve our web sites and make them better and sustainable. It was pointed out in one of the panels, web sites like Daily Kos, Firedoglake, Think Progress and, yes, The Stars Hollow Gazette are now part of the “Main Stream Media”, the “untraditional” part. The traditional media now reads and quotes us. We are getting louder and noticed.

This is my second Netroots convention. I went to NN09 in Pittsburgh after I had returned from a year long hiatus from blogging. In 2008, I was very disappointed with the DNC for nominating Barack Obama and disenfranchising the voters of Florida and Michigan. Needless to say I am not surprised that many liberal and independent voters have now removed their rose colored glasses and are seeing Obama for the corporatist, right winger that he is.

Agree or not, Netroots Nation has grown and is getting the attention of the traditional MSM. This was very evident with the tough questions on jobs, marriage equality, the multiple wars, etc., that were put to White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer and the coverage from numerous MSM sources. The audience didn’t like his pap answers and he was roundly booed. This would not have happened last year.

The video starts off with Minnesota’s US Senator Amy Klobuchar. The interview with Pfeiffer starts at about 11:00 minutes.

Warning: secure all objects that if thrown at your monitor would do severe damage.

At NN11, White House Propagandist Pfeiffer Preps for President Romney

by Scarecrow

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer appeared today at NN11 to explain why progressives should continue to support President Obama. From HuffPo reporter, Amanda Terkel:

   “There has been much that has been accomplished in the first 2 1/2 years, and as the President said the other night, the work is not done. There are more things we want to do,” he said. “We can either work together to continue that work and finish the project we started in 2008, or we can be relegated back to the sidelines and see what a Republican president with potentially a Republican congressional majority in at least one country, will do to this country.”

   “We’ve had that experience. It started in 2000. We ended up with massive deficits, we ended up with a war in Iraq, we ended up with massive violations of people’s civil liberties. We ended up with corporate interests like Wall Street running rampant through Washington. That’s the choice there. This President is as committed to the ideals he ran on today as he was the day he stood in Springfield, Ill. in 2007. He has fought for them as hard as he could. Washington is a hard and frustrating place. We’re doing it under tremendously challenging circumstances, and he’s going to keep fighting for them. On some of the things that you care about and he cares about, I promise you he is as frustrated as you are that we haven’t been able to get it done.”

Based on these reassuring words, the response is supposed to be, “well, gosh, the alternative is worse, so I guess we should still vote for Obama.”

No. Just no. You’ve had your chance to prove you are indeed different, and you’ve failed on every front. Even though I have often decried the intolerant, inhumane, radical extremism, nuttiness and willful ignorance of what the Tea-GOP has become, I no longer believe that President Obama is meaningly different from what President Mitt Romney would be or indeed would have been.

And as I could never vote for the unprincipled moral chameleon Romney, I cannot vote again for a faux Democrat whose policies and moral sentiments now seem little different from Romney’s.

I defy any Obama spokesperson to point out any meaningful difference between what Obama has done and what a President Romney would have done.

I was not at all uncomfortable stating that I would not support or vote for Obama, that I was done with voting for the lesser of two evils and that the scare tactics of the possibility of a President Pawlenty or Bachmann were no worse than what we already have in the Oval Office. What we need to do is work our butts off at the local level to take back the House (we are 24 seats short), strengthen the Senate and to primary blue dogs. It is time we became Egyptians and Wisconsinites.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Thursday night’s opening speakers to the nearly 2500 bloggers attending this year’s Netroots Nation were former Vermont governor, Dr. Howard Dean, WI State Senator Chris Larsen, AFT President Randi Weingarten and Yemeni blogger Afrah Nasser. The highlight of the night was the keynote address by former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold who was introduced by Marcy Wheeler of FDL.

Russ Feingold is a hero, and for good reason, to progressives. Russ was one, if not the only one, of the Democratic Senate, make that Senate as a whole, who really stood up for civil liberties in the face of the bipartisan onslaught that has occurred over the last decade, both under George Bush and Barack Obama.

Russ Feingold: ‘The Democratic Party Is In Danger Of Losing Its Identity’

By Amanda Terkel

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold issued Democrats a dire warning at the annual Netroots Nation conference here on Thursday, saying the party was in danger of losing its “soul” if it accepts corporate contributions in the 2012 elections.

“Sometimes we have to be very direct with the Democratic Party,” said Feingold to the crowd of progressive activists and bloggers at the Minneapolis Convention Center. “Just as you have long pushed our Democrats to stand up for their ideals, I’m here this evening to ask you to redouble your efforts. I fear that the Democratic Party is in danger of losing its identity.”

Feingold pointed to Priorities USA, a new Democratic independent expenditure group — known as a super political action committee (PAC) — that is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of corporate money. It was launched by former deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton and former senior adviser Sean Sweeney in April.

“Creating those kinds of super PACs for Democrats is wrong. It is not something we should do. I disagree,” Feingold said. “I think it’s a mistake for us to take the argument that they like to make — that what we’re going to do now is, we’re going to take corporate money like the Republicans do, then after we win, we’ll change it. When’s the last time anyone did that? Most people don’t change the rules after they win.”

Cross posted posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Yesterday was a busy day here at NN11 in sunny, warm Minneapolis, MN. There are so many really interesting panels that choosing which to attend is tough. I’m also here in a different capacity than I was in Pittsburgh two years ago, I have two webs sites that I administer. I’ll talk about that later probably when I get back.

On  of the outstanding panel I attended was with Jane Hamsher of FDL, John Aravosis of AMERICAblog, DADT, LGBT and Army veteran Lt. Dan Choi and Dream Act activist Felipe Matos. They discusses what progressives could do when the president is not into your issues and how to get the administration to take the lead. When the floor opened to questions, the first person to a approach the stage was a young an who said he was a member of Obama For America (OFA) who managed to cause an incident that has gotten quite a bit of attention from the internet and on-line news media:

Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged from the military for running afoul of its anti-gay Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, provided a visual when an Organizing for America volunteer stood up and asked him to support Obama in 2012. The man said he did not support gay marriage — “civil unions?” he offered weakly — and Choi promptly ripped up an Organizing for America flyer he had been given and threw it back in the man’s face.

I also had the pleasure and honor of saluting Lt. Choi and giving him a hug. Here’s is the video of the full panel which was quite a lively conversation

Welcome to the Health and Fitness weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

On the popular television show “Glee,” the ultimate prize for a great performance is a trip to a restaurant called Breadstix. And in the real world, breadsticks are a main attraction at restaurants like the Olive Garden, and even pizza delivery services have gotten on the breadstick bandwagon.

But in terms of nutrition, the typical breadstick is not a food most people associate with healthful eating. This week, Martha Rose Shulman tries to change that image with five new recipes for baking a more healthful breadstick. . . .

Here are five flavorful ways to prepare healthful homemade breadsticks. And for a gluten-free breadstick, you can substitute gluten-free flour mix for the whole-wheat flour in this week’s recipes.

These grainy breadsticks can be irresistible, and they’re much healthier than the restaurant variety.

Walnut oil gives these breadsticks a nutty flavor.

Sesame seeds are used in both the dough and the coating of these nutty-tasting breadsticks.

Rye and caraway, a match made in heaven, aren’t just for Jewish rye bread and rye crisps.

Sesame, poppy and sunflower seeds give these breadsticks a satisfying crunch.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Answer: When it’s a Republican former governor shilling for fracking. It takes a comedian to nail former Governor Tom Ridge (R-PA) trying to say he’s not a lobbyist and cover up the dangers of fracking.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette ]

More fun from the far right and re-inventing history. Sarah Palin’s ignorance about Paul Revere’s ride at least didn’t screw with the time line. The right wings favorite winger historian, Texan Evangelical, David Barton, whose theory is that America’s unique success in the world is divinely caused and due to its commitment to core Judeo-Christian principles, has his own version of history stating that the Founding Fathers rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Small problem with that, Darwin hadn’t been born yet and Origin of the Species wasn’t published until 1859 but according to Barton “there is no need to debate the teaching of Creationism in public schools, because the Founding Fathers made clear that we needed to do so.”

From Mother Jones:

On Wednesday, Right Wing Watch flagged a recent interview Barton gave with an evangelcial talk show, in which he argues that the Founding Fathers had explicitly rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yes, that Darwin. The one whose seminal work, On the Origin of Species, wasn’t even published until 1859. Barton declared, “As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, they’d already had the entire debate over creation and evolution, and you get Thomas Paine, who is the least religious Founding Father, saying you’ve got to teach Creation science in the classroom. Scientific method demands that!” Paine died in 1809, the same year Darwin was born. . . . .

It’s been said that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were ahead of their times. But perhaps not that prescient.

In the same interview, Barton explains that one of the main reasons that the colonies wanted to break away from England was because it would then become easier to abolish slavery. Any who has studied the basics of the American Revolution knows that the issue of slavery was tabled in order to secure approval of the Declaration of Independence. (For the record, Britain abolished slavery in 1833-32 years before the United States.)

Also according to Baron, Jesus would have love Paul Ryan’s budget because Jesus was opposed to the progressive income tax and he was opposed the minimum wage. The Republican’s just love this guy:

Newt Gingrich is a fan. So’s Michele Bachmann. Mike Huckabee’s such a booster that he recently said that all Americans should be “forced at gunpoint” to listen to this guy.

The object of this high praise from Huckabee-and recent shout-outs from other potential GOP presidential contenders-is David Barton, a Republican activist and minister who founded WallBuilders, a for-profit evangelical outfit that works to inject religion into politics. Barton holds some pretty unconventional views, and in the past he has spoken alongside fringe figures like Holocaust deniers and white supremacists. Among other things, he claims that Jesus would oppose the capital gains tax and the minimum wage; that global warming is “self-correcting”; and that the nation’s homeland security apparatus has been infiltrated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He also contends that the separation of church and state is a perversion of the Founding Fathers’ intention to create a Christian nation.

Remember the Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever, maybe Darwin popped through the portal to meet with the Founding Fathers to discuss evolution. I bet Ben Franklin would have been quite intrigued.

h/t John Aravosis at AMERICAblog

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Last month Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) celebrated its 25th Anniversary. It held an event in Manhattan on May 11th with four of the most well known voices of the the left and advocates for fairness, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Amy Goodman and Glen Greenwald. Glenn’s 30 minute speech is now available on You Tube. The DVD of the entire night is available for sale at FAIR’s website.