It's been frustrating watching the GOP pummel O2B candidate Al Franken with little response the past few months. There's an old-school view among consultants that you raise money until Labor Day, then you truly launch your campaign. However, we've seen in race after race that defining your opponent early can pay huge dividends. It worked for Jon Tester, as Conrad Burns was softened up in late 2005. And clearly, it's worked for Norm Coleman in Minnesota as Republicans have drug Franken through the mud all summer.

Well, it looks like things are finally changing. Franken's first ad looks good, and does a phenomenal job of explaining his "tax problem". And I love the "stay tuned for more" line, as the campaign clearly sets out to build its Norm Coleman narrative.

Franken would be one of our strongest progressive champions in the Senate. Winning this seat would be one of our biggest upgrades in the Senate this year. It's an important race.

On the web:
Al Franken for Senate
Orange to Blue ActBlue page

Remember way back when -- about a year ago, in fact -- when a fresh-faced kid called "America" was looking forward to Magical September? That time when, if all was not yet right with Iraq, Congressional Republicans would finally part ways with Pretzeldent George W. Bush, and bring our troops home?

Well, it didn't happen then, and it's not happening now, either.

After weeks of late-night negotiations and under intense U.S. pressure, Iraqi lawmakers failed to pass a much-debated provincial elections law Wednesday before adjourning for the month.

The failure to pass the law, which would govern elections in provinces across the country, may push the elections into next year. If elections don't happen by the end of this year, it could be July before the balloting could be carried out, U.N. spokesman Said Arikat said.

Elections originally were scheduled for October of this year.

The latest move by parliament underscores the great divide between security and political progress in Iraq. While violence is at a record low, progress on the political front is lagging as sectarian blocs wrangle over each divisive issue to come before the parliament.

Parliament also has yet to pass a law to share oil revenue or to amend the constitution on such issues as the role of Islam and the nature of federalism in the government. With deep religious and ethnic divisions, members have opted to deal with such issues by putting them off.

Also not accomplished before parliament's adjournment: the Status of Forces Agreement.

So, how's that "surge" workin' out, in terms of, you know, getting us the #@*% out of there, already?

No elections.
No oil law.
No SOFA.

What'd they call those things, way back when? Benchmarks?

Incredibly, the Republicans not only never left the Pretzeldent's side, they went and nominated another of these nuts that continues to insist, in the face of these three stinging failures, that "the surge worked."

And that all we need is a hundred more years of such success.

(h/t: Democrats.com)

Crocodile tears and calls for "discipline" from ICE chief Julie L. Myers:

The head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will ask Congress to consider taking disciplinary action against one of its members for a statement he made equating ICE agents with the Gestapo, a senior agency official said Wednesday.

Luis V. Gutierrez , vice chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee that handles immigration, has called for a moratorium on ICE enforcement actions until Congress passes a comprehensive overhaul, something it has failed to do in each of the past two years.

In a column written for Politico, Gutierrez, D-Ill., commenting on recent ICE arrests of illegal immigrants in Iowa, said: "You know who is in charge now? The Gestapo agents at Homeland Security. They are in charge."

A senior ICE official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Julie L. Myers, the assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was "absolutely appalled and deeply angered" by the statement. The official said Myers would send a letter to senior members of Congress asking that disciplinary action be taken against Gutierrez’ for his remarks.

Oh noes!!! Julie Myers is "appalled and deeply angered."

Glass houses, my friend:

Democratic lawmakers yesterday accused Julie L. Myers, an assistant secretary of homeland security, of misleading Congress after photographs emerged of Myers at an office Halloween party honoring a white employee dressed as an escaped prisoner with dreadlocks and makeup that made him look African American or Hispanic.

Myers, whose Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency runs the nation's 32,000-bed immigration detention system, was on a three-judge panel that gave a "most original costume" award to the worker at an ICE charity event Oct. 31. Myers subsequently apologized, saying the costume could leave "a negative impression" of ICE's respect for people whom it detains and explained that she learned only the next day that the man was wearing makeup.

My advice? Stick to disciplining your own branch. You've got no business looking outside your own agency -- and some would say none outside your own behavior, quite frankly -- much less outside your own branch. The executive has done quite enough meddling in the legislature, thank you very much. The last thing we need is petty bureaucrats with their own ethical rap sheets whining to Congress about which legislators do and don't need disciplining for huwting your widdle feewings. I can appreciate a boss's desire to stand up for the integrity of her team, but seriously, were you really thinking this was a task you were cut out for?

Do your own lifting, Myers. I know that as an Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security, you have no authority to punish a Member of Congress yourself for his remarks, so you need to call on Congress to do it for you.

But then again... as an Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security, you have no authority to punish a Member of Congress for his remarks.

That's actually a feature, not a bug.

Keep your nose in your own branch, please. You don't have oversight authority here. And maybe keep your thoughts about who needs to be disciplined for appalling behavior a little closer to home.

TN-09: The ridiculous Nikki Tinker's primary challenge against bona fide progressive Rep. Steve Cohen has gotten ugly. Skeptical Brotha lays down a righteous rant against Tinker:

I didn’t think it was possible to be more repellent than [Harold] Ford, but Aunt Nikki is the willing overseer on Pinnacle Airlines corporate plantation as Vice President for Labor Relations and General Counsel. Aunt Nikki is representative of the lowest form of human life and is the worst kind of counterfeit Negress imaginable. As an employment lawyer, she specializes in destroying employee rights to collectively bargain and be free from workplace racial discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.

Her campaign report is full of two kinds of people, acquaintances from her home state of Alabama and her motley collection of crooked contacts in the business world. The CEO of Pinnacle Airlines, Phil Trenary, her boss and corporate puppet master, is represented, as are Republican corporate employment lawyers from her former law firm, John and Ruth Alley. Finally, there is a member of Pinnacle’s Board of Directors, GOP rainmaker and real estate magnate James McGehee and his kith and kin [...]

My colleagues at Black Agenda Report, in their former incarnation as the writers behind Black Commentator, came up with the nifty moniker of Trojan Horse to describe Black Democrats backed surreptitiously by Republican money and the corporate and right-wing foundation elite. They highlighted BET’s Bob Johnson and politicians Cory Booker and Harold Whore, Jr. Speaking of the Whore, he has used his new wife, Emily Threlkeld Ford, to funnel more than $3300 to his protégé. The Trojan Horse moniker definitely fits Nikki Tinker to a T because as her campaign finance report shows, she is a a member in good standing of this right-wing club.

As the moniker from Greek mythology implies, Aunt Nikki is a stealth weapon of the right-wing that optimally would be used to destroy progressive black representation and the social, political, and economic viability of Black Memphis. Unfortunately for our corporate enemies on the right, Aunt Nikki’s campaign exploded today like an IED in a war zone when it released an ad which strikes a note of false religiosity and implies that Steve Cohen is an Jewish interloper unwelcome in black churches and alludes to a bill to protect “religious freedom” and the unfettered right of religious organizations to discriminate against gay and lesbian people. This is the culmination of her clumsy attempts to make inroads with the black ministerial community by pandering to the homophobia of a select group of black pastors.

It looks like the wounds are fatal. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of cynical operators and puppet masters—especially Harold Ford. As of this afternoon, Emily’s List was forced to denounce the ad with egg on their faces. Finally, with the entrance of Black state representative of Joe Towns in this race and the loss of prominent civil rights leaders like Maxine Smith, Aunt Nikki’s fantasy of being the power structure’s corporate mammy in Washington is just 24 hours from a lethal rejection by the voters from which there will be no appeal.

EMILY's List has backed Tinker, and has lost a HUGE amount of credibility in doing so. It really may be one of the most political tone-deaf decisions the organization has made this decade. I hope Skeptical Brotha is right, and that the district's predominantly African American voters stick with Cohen.

For the district's voters, Cohen has, in the past two years, already been quite the upgrade from their previous congressman: Harold Ford, Jr.

While first-term U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen was on the floor of the House on Tuesday, guiding passage of a historic resolution apologizing to African-American citizens for slavery and Jim Crow laws, his most prominent and well-funded Democratic primary opponent was out in the Memphis heat trying to win voters [...]

Cohen likes to argue that voters got a change in 2006, when Harold Ford Jr. took his moderate voting record into a statewide campaign for U.S. Senate and Cohen was sent to Washington with a consistently liberal voting record nearly three decades long. And he relishes pointing to a July 13 debate in which Tinker could not name a vote with which she disagreed.

"In the state Senate, I voted against Confederate license plates when African-American senators voted for them," Cohen said. "I stood up and argued almost singularly against payday loans which wreak havoc against black people. I voted for a felon-rights bill in 1986."

Cohen makes a long list of other instances, as well as macro issues such as health care and tax reform, that he believes would help African-American Memphians.

"These are things I have a gut feeling for," Cohen said. "All these issues may affect African-Americans more than others, but it affects everyone."

To Rhodes College political science professor Marcus Pohlmann, a longtime observer of politics in the Mid-South, Cohen's aggressive advocacy on African-American issues reflects "the peculiar" dynamic of Memphis's 9th District.

"You wouldn't have seen Harold Ford Jr. out front on (the apology resolution)," said Pohlmann, and it is true that Cohen's predecessor did not sign on as co-sponsor to similar slavery apology resolutions in 2000 or in 1997.

"I don't think (Ford Jr.) would have felt the necessity to prove himself to the African-American community in the same way."

Ironies obviously abound, but the district's voters have a true champion in Cohen, and a vile right-wing trojan horse in Tinker. Tonight, the district's voters will have their final say.

Metaphors! Get your red, hot metaphors!

Politics is tough. So is driving in Miami. Just ask Sen. John McCain's tour bus driver.

The expected Republican nominee's tour bus got tangled in a traffic accident about 3 p.m. Wednesday on 55th and Biscayne Boulevard.

No one was injured. Both vehicles were damaged, but the van got the worst of it.

Sen. McCain was not traveling on the bus when the accident occured.

Guess who was?

The bus driver, along with Sen. Joe Leiberman and an aide, were traveling south on Biscayne when they collided with a blue van, according to Miami police.

Seriously, this thing is just bursting with metaphors. And it wasn't just a fender bender either.

(Via Trepanator.)

The 2000s, or the "ut-ohs" as a colleague thought we should name this decade back before it started, has turned out to be not so great on the employment front.

As Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute writes:

It took longer to regain pre-recession employment levels: Nearly four years passed before the number of jobs in the economy returned to the level reached prior to the recession of 2001. By comparison, after the recession of the early 1990s, it took just over two-and-a-half years to regain peak level employment.

Employment growth remained sluggish: Over the entire business cycle of the 2000s, job growth averaged only 0.6% per year—well below what was needed to keep up with labor force growth. By comparison, over the business cycle of the 1990s, annual job growth averaged 1.8%.

The employment-to-population ratio deteriorated: For the first business cycle on record, the employment-to-population ratio declined over the 2000s, dropping by 1.5 percentage points. Over the 1990s the employment-to-population ratio increased by 1.7 percentage points.

If those statistics glaze you over, here are some to bring the tears, what with unemployment on the rise, and 8.5 million officially out of work (which is an undercount):

Only 37% of the country's unemployed received benefits in 2007, down from 55% in 1958 and 44% in 2001, according to the Labor Department. The others have exhausted their benefits, haven't applied or don't qualify.

Those who don't qualify include many part-time workers, people who quit or were fired, and workers who didn't earn enough money in a one-year "base period" that often excludes the most recent three to six months. Worker advocates say the New Deal-era system hasn't been updated enough to reflect an age of more-frequent job changes, more part-time work and falling union membership. ...

Unemployment insurance was "intended to largely support traditional male breadwinners in traditional, manufacturing-type jobs," says labor economist Lawrence F. Katz. "It's not necessarily set up for people who have multiple jobs, for people who work in and out of different jobs, for people in part-time work."

In Ohio, people filing for unemployment insurance need to have an average weekly wage of $206 -- 27.5% of the state average -- in their base period in order to qualify. That excludes many low-income workers forced to work part time, such as people at temp agencies with erratic work schedules.

Those part-timers aren't just teenagers, or college students, or moms working to "supplement" the family income. In other words, they aren't all volunteers for reduced hours. Many would like a full-time job.

The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part-time work because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million - the largest figure since the U.S. government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.

The loss of pay has become a primary source of pain for millions of American families, reinforcing the downturn gripping the economy.

Paychecks are shrinking just as home prices plunge and gas prices soar, furthering the austerity across the nation.

As for women, The New York Times recently reported that "for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen." Every previous recovery since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.

The need for a new New Deal has been evident for quite some time, and every day it becomes clearer.

CBS 7/31-8/5/08 (RV) (July):
Obama 45 (45)
McCain 39 (39)

Obama's lead over McCain is built on stronger support from Democrats, liberals, African Americans, voters under age 45 and women. Most former supporters of Hillary Clinton are backing Obama, as are a plurality of working class whites, a group Obama struggled to attract during the primary.

McCain leads among conservatives, Republicans, white evangelicals and voters age 45 and over. The presumptive GOP nominee has a narrow lead with men and with whites.

Independents are evenly split between the two candidates.

From the detailed .pdf:

The enthusiasm gap remains: Obama’s supporters are three times as likely as McCain’s to be enthusiastic about their candidate.

BTW Bush's job approval is at 25%, equaling his all-time low (only Nixon at 24% and Truman at 22% were ever lower).

AP-Ipsos 7/31-8/4/08 (RV) (June):
Obama 47 (50)
McCain 41 (43)

TIME (LV with leaners) 7/31-8/4/08 (June):
Obama 46 (47)
McCain 41 (43)

For those who care, the Wednesday Gallup tracker has Obama +2, and Thursday Rasmussen has Obama (with and without leaners) +1. As usual, they run a few points behind the national polls.

Meanwhile, McCain is not making any headway despite the plethora of negative ads. Since the talking heads can't sell their Main Theme A 'race is tightening' idea (always relevant whenever it can be pushed), they've all moved on to Backup Theme B, which is "Obama is not closing the deal'. But why should he? It's summer, the conventions are a few weeks away, and there are plenty of undecideds out there who want to hear more about policy and learn more about the candidates before they make up their minds. CBS on uncommitted voters:

CBS News re-interviewed voters who said they were uncommitted, including those who had a candidate but said their minds could change, when we first spoke with them in a CBS News/New York Times poll in mid-July. In the July poll, that was about 36 percent of all registered voters.

The most recent round of interviews suggest that these uncommitted voters remain largely up for grabs.

Seven in ten remain uncommitted. And while a quarter of this group now say they have made a commitment to a candidate that they don’t think will change before the election, about as many as a month ago don’t have a candidate choice at all yet.

This group seems to have become less interested in the campaign since last month. When asked in mid-July how much attention they’d been paying to the 2008 campaign generally, 45 percent said they’d paid a lot. When asked in this poll how much attention they’d been paying in the last few weeks, only 18 percent reported paying a lot of attention.

On the one hand the race is stable because Obama has kept this lead up since clinching. On the other, the race is fluid because the undecideds have not  - erm - decided. Keep that in mind when looking at pushing leaners to decide. Does it really make sense to do that? They'll make up their mind when they're ready...

So, back to basics. The convention will be the next big shift in the numbers (not the VP choice, which excites only the talking heads). As far as Obama's standing goes, the negative ads have not hurt, the trip overseas has not hurt, the idea that "whatever you can possibly think of is good for McCain" has not hurt.

Like it or not, this is hurry up and wait stuff (wait until September). And it doesn't matter how many journalists like McCain and carry his water. He's not doing any better because of it, even in TIME's LV poll (who can figure what an LV is this year?). Obama will neither clinch the election nor lose it in August. In fact, it's looking more like 1980 every day. But in the meantime, Obama's lead holds.

Update [2008-8-7 12:43:21 by DemFromCT]: from First Read:

If it’s August, that means that Democratic politicos are wringing their hands about their presidential candidate’s campaign strategy, even though this guy -- unlike the guy four years ago -- is actually winning in the mid-single digits.

We're done fundraising! (For now.) Thanks everyone.

Your one stop pundit shop.

David Broder wants the two presidential candidates to return to the high road and hints that if Obama had agreed to meet McCain in a series of town hall meetings, all of this icky negativity could have been avoided.

John Kramm looks at the disparity between how the Chinese people think the world views their country and the reality.

Ted Gup weighs in on the Justice Department's announcement the the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks is solved and closed:

With the presumed suicide last week of Bruce Ivins, the Ft. Detrick biodefense expert and target of the FBI's anthrax investigation, the Justice Department effectively pronounced the seven-year-old case solved and the national nightmare behind us. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. Ivins's death only makes it more difficult to resolve the lingering questions about the poison sent by mail in the fall of 2001 and, more broadly, about American justice.

Steve Chapman thinks that Phil Gramm's only crime was telling the truth and that the problem with the economy is simply that we're poorer than we used to be and we all need to suck it up.

Thomas Sowell, drawing on the example of Steven Hatfill and others, decries what he calls "publicity abuse." Sowell says, "the whole country continues to this day to pay dearly for having Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court," after the smearing of poor, misunderstood Robert Bork.

Karl Rove needs new material.

Maurice Ferre believes that the "Latino vote in Florida could make the difference for Obama in this presidential election."

Gail Collins takes a look at both candidate's energy plans, and while Obama doesn't get off scott-free, she saves her best zingers for McCain, including her thoughts on McCain offering up his wife for a topless beauty pagent.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

A Case of Whiplash

The American public over the last four six eight twelve months:

Who is Obama??? We don’t know enough about Obama!! How can we elect Obama if we don’t know enough about him??? He's too mysterious to us! He's too unknown! We need to know more...more...MORE!!! Help us, oh traditional media! Help us to learn more about this man who came out of nowhere by airing non-stop coverage of his words, his deeds...his ups, his downs, his smiles, his frowns! Satisfy our curiosity, oh Punditocracy! Fill in our blanks! Feed us the facts!

The American Public now:

Barack Obama may be the fresh face in this year's presidential election, but nearly half say they're already tired of hearing about him, a poll says.

With Election Day still three months away, 48 percent said they're hearing too much about the Democratic candidate, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just 26 percent said the same about his Republican rival, John McCain.

On sale today in the C&J gift shop: neck braces.

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

According to calculations of the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution:

Senator Barack Obama's tax plan would provide a rise in after-tax income of 5.4% for the bottom 20% of Americans in 2012. The top 1/10th of 1% of Americans would see a drop of 12.4%

Senator John McCain's tax plan would provide a 0.9% rise in after-tax income for the bottom 20% of Americans in 2012. The top 1/10 of 1% would see a rise of 11.6%.

Robert Gordon at The Wonk Room pointed out this table a few months ago:

^{Table data by Emmanuel Saez via The Wonk Room at Think Progress.}

Look at incomes for the top 1% of earners — the solid black triangles. You’ll see that in 2006, their share of the nation’s income (22.9%) reached its modern peak. The only year higher? 1928.

Another table shows that the top 10% in 2006 took a bigger share (49.7%) than at any point since 1917. The year 1928 was the runner-up.

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
— Plutarch

+ + +

^{See BenGoshi's uplifting photo Diary of modern Hiroshima.}

+ + +

^{The Overnight News Digest is posted, including the story, South Africa unions stage mass strike.}

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are BentLiberal, drbcladd, Louisiana 1976, and Yashua, with Unitary Moonbat shuffling the scrolls.

August 6 is a day heavy with portent: previous todays have seen Jamaica gaining its independence from Great Britain (1962); the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (1945); and the first execution by electric chair (1890).

• Two diaries about three days we must always remember: BlueMoon writes on the anniversary of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Two days we cannot forget and one year after the deadly Utah mine tragedy jlms qkw reminds us to remember in Coal Kills: Anniversary 2:48AM. (BentLiberal)
• Valtin puts the recent drumhead tribunal in perspective with Torture Trial Ends: Reflections on the Hamdan Verdict.  (Unitary Moonbat)
• dmhlt 66 crunches some numbers, finding that To Get Even RICHER, CEOs Tap Workers' Pension Plans. Okay, the WSJ crunched the numbers but the diarist's point stands. (drbcladd)
• jennix uses both history and anecdote to weave a tale of Steinbeck, Hemon and Our Progressive Zeitgeist.  (Unitary Moonbat)
• Liberal Youth warns of the quagmire of occupation in the well-researched Afghanistan as the next Iraq. (BentLiberal)
• Stormbear's Black History: Brown vs. Board of Education is a good overview of the case and some of social change that transpired as a result of the decision.  (Unitary Moonbat)
• Eagleye spots McCain and His Wife at Motorcycle Sex-O-Rama. Not really, but neither do the traditional, corporate media. (drbcladd)
• Citing Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side, diarist teacherken asks tough questions about the actions of our government and ourselves in the haunting diary, "if that conscience is well and truthfully informed." (BentLiberal)
• First-time diarist rwthomso looks at our country's Warped View and has a bit to say. (drbcladd)
• exexcutedtoday sees some of the same themes in today's date as I do – check out As American as the A-bomb: Debut of the Electric Chair. (Unitary Moonbat)
• feebog discusses a connection to 2001's anthrax attacks and asks some tantalizing questions in The Anthrax Puzzle- Why Princeton?. (Louisiana 1976)
• RH Reality Check views the outcome of a Kansas Republican primary as a sign of things to come in Pro-Choice GOP Win & Kline Defeat Signal End of Social Conservatism. (BentLiberal)
• hannah explores Bushco, Korean War massacres, and issues of motive in Criminal Intent--That's going to be hard to prove. (Unitary Moonbat)

taylormattd has tonight's Top Comments: These Should Be Sig Lines, Part VII.

jotter brings High Impact Diaries - August 5, 2008.

Enjoy, and please promote your own favorites in this open thread.

In reading today's Washington Post story about the latest round of amazingly generous McCain donors, the quote from the Taco Bell supervisor who had given $9,200 to McCain sounds somehow familiar:

We funneled it through the channel in Florida because that's the contact we had.

Where else have you heard someone say something like that?

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!!!

The latest Obama campaign ad, and this is a good one:

That clip from Fox News is gold:

The president and I agree on most issues. There's was a recent study that showed that I voted with the president over 90 percent of the time.

Mavericky!

We're trying to get 200 contributions for Annette Taddeo and Jon Powers before tonight. Both candidates have mid-quarter filing deadlines (Taddeo's is Wednesday) because of primaries this month.

We're halfway there done with Taddeo, a little further back almost there with Powers, so help us meet the goal.

In case you'd forgotten, presidential elections are also terror alert season. There's still time for the 'smart' voter to accessorize.

During the summer and fall of 2004, right up to Election Day, DHS favored us with a long string of dubious terror alerts. The effect was to give Bush's sagging approval ratings a boost.

Already DHS is preparing the ground for what could be another lively game of scare the bejeezus out of voters (h/t BJ).

Anti-terror officials in the U.S. cite this summer and fall's lineup of two major political parties' conventions, November's general election and months of transition into a new presidential administration as cause for heightened awareness and action.

This is what the Department of Homeland Security is quietly declaring a Period of Heightened Alert, or POHA, a time frame when terrorists may have more incentive to attack...

At the moment, the nation's public threat level will remain at yellow, or "elevated," but not orange, or "high."

The reasons: There are no specifics indicating an attack on the U.S. is imminent, and U.S. officials do not want to be accused of trying to inject themselves into the presidential campaign.

Accused 'again', one might almost have said. This game is right on schedule compared to four years ago. Notoriously, on July 8, 2004 DHS head Tom Ridge held a press conference announcing that people should expect more terror alerts before the election. He made himself such a laughing stock that the next year Ridge tried to shift the blame for his own alerts to officials at other agencies. This time, though, DHS is trying play it cooler. Their window for alerts extends potentially through July 2009. You see, it's not just an election year gimmmick.

Government officials point to the Sept. 11 attacks, which happened just nine months into a new administration...They say history suggests a need to take potential threats seriously -- especially in the very near future.

It's a two-fer: Excuse the politicization of terror alerts in advance, and make excuses retrospectively for Bush's utter failure to act on this Presidential Daily Briefing 7 years ago today.

What better way to celebrate the 7th anniversary of Ignored "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" PDB Day than with a conviction in a sham show trial?

Yup, it's been seven years since that infamous daily briefing at the Crawford pig farm ranch, an event which Bush marked by taking the rest of the month off.

The day after he received the memo, "Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday," the Washington Post noted. Today — 2,557 days later — Bin Laden still remains free and "determined to strike in U.S."

But they got his driver. Sort of.

After closing arguments Monday, Charles D. Swift, a former Navy lawyer who has represented Mr. Hamdan for years, said the two-week proceeding here had been a trial that did not follow the American rule of law and that the defense believed American courts would eventually correct the legal errors here. Mr. Swift called the military commission "a made-up tribunal to try anybody we don’t like."

The not-guilty verdict on the conspiracy charge was a setback for the military prosecutors. The charge had asserted that Mr. Hamdan joined in the conspiracy that included the 2001 and other major terror attacks by helping transport and protect Mr. bin Laden....

Michael J. Berrigan, the deputy chief defense counsel for Guantánamo, said the defense was encouraged by the verdict. "For a team that was expected to strike out at every pitch," he said, "we at least hit a triple."

He described the conspiracy charge that was rejected by the panel as the government’s main charge, and noted that when Mr. Hamdan was originally charged in 2003 the only charge he faced was conspiracy.

So, while they don't have bin Laden, and have no convinctions of anyone involved in that conspiracy, they've got Hamdan on "material support." And, as the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years, points out they've sealed the undermining of long-standing traditions of jurisprudence:

"Hamdan’s trial violated two of the most fundamental criminal justice principles accepted by all developed nations:  the prohibition on the use of coerced evidence and the prohibition on retroactive criminal laws.

The trial will not create finality – the decision to keep these cases out of the ordinary criminal courts will produce years of appeals over novel legal issues raised by the untested military commissions system. Even after those appeals are finished, the process will never be seen as legitimate by the world.  This case was the first trial run of the commissions system, and the decision proves nothing except that the system itself should be scrapped. Terrorism-related crimes should be tried in the time-tested domestic criminal justice system, a system whose rules have been designed over the centuries with one goal: to seek out the truth."

While those years of appeals proceed, the Pentagon intends to detain all of the defendents forever, anyway, even those who are acquitted. As if that will keep the world from noticing that bin Laden is still at large and the "War on Terror" has been a complete debacle.