The October 15 debate between Obama and McCain wasn't the final 2008 election cycle presidential debate.

Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler (NY 8 Congressional District Manhattan/Brooklyn) and former Pataki aid and Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Greg Menken will sub for the actual presidential candidates in a 2 PM Sunday October 19 debate at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (CBJ), 275 Martling Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10314. CBJ’s Men’s Club is sponsoring the event.

Nadler and Menken have previously debated each other as presidential candidate surrogates.

I will co-moderate the event with CBJ mens club pres Ronnie Ben-Aron.

For more Information Contact: Roy Moskowitz (718) 370-3977 Mobile (917) 992-1873 Email: R2ceo@aol.com or Ronnie Ben-Aron (347) 449-3723 Email: rbenaron@yahoo.com.

Why is it, do you think, that some tyrants love show trials? Why not, as death squads did in Argentina and Chile kidnap, torture and murder at midnight? Why detain & torture people, coerce confessions, rig kangaroo courts (my apologies again to the kangaroos who, after all are innocent unlike our Decider-in-Chief) and bar lawyers from representing them effectively?

As you may well know by now, Mr. Bush as decided to follow up on the show trial and hanging of Saddam Hussein (who may well have been guilty of something, but we’ll never know) by trying” six people in Guantanamo before military commissions and executing them. Their crime? A la little Rudy one-note, claimed involvement in the September 11 attacks.

In order to make acceptable the “evidence” extracted by Mr. Bush by torture (Did he watch the torture tapes?) a public relations campaign has launched to show that water boarding is just fine. Mr. Injustice Antonin Scalia loves torture , he tells us, rewriting the Federal Rules of Evidence with scenes Fox’s 24. (Do you think Mr. Justice S plans to recuse himself from deciding these issues? Me neither.)

The White House whitewash of water boarding, here and here is buttressed by a bizarre argument: after we tortured them, we interrogated them nicely, indeed treated them to Starbucks Coffee and they still confessed.  read more »

While progressive sentiment is strong is the land (most people when asked, for example, favor single-payer universal health insurance, nowhere on the political agenda), progressive institutions are not. Our leaders are blown like dry leaves by the force of concentrated power, even if their personal convictions might lead them elsewhere.

Congress has just enacted a multi-Billion “stimulus” package to put cash into people’s hands and pump money into the economy so as to deter the looming (but technically not-here-yet) recession. The basic stories are reported in the NY Times and Washington Post . The package price is between $152- and $168 Billion; bringing to mind Everett Dirkson's remark: "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money". The package passed is better than that bargained for by President Bush and Speaker Pelosi. There are problems with the package.

It throws from the train the weakest and poorest of us: no food stamp increases and no extension for longer term unemployed. The George Bush-Nancy Pelosi vision of compassionate conservatism shuts out the poor. Money for the poor and unemployed would have been the quickest spent and produced the most economic activity for each dollar spent.  read more »

Liza's Note:
Please welcome to our humble blogdobe the fierce Ms. Debra Cooper, NYSDems Comittee Chairwoman for the Upper East Side.

She attended yesterday's now infamous "insult to truth" testimony on how she didn't for a minute mislead the public in believing that there was no potential harm in the toxic dust spread about New York City by the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Debra does and amazing job at capturing more than just the soundbites. As she said to me in the email that came with this post, not only did Todd Whitman dance "around her statements about the City government's responsibility for the safety of the first responders, especially in terms of their use of respirators. Unlike her prior statements, today in the hearing she did not make any direct accusations that the City and Guiliani did not do the right thing."

An observation that, as Debra noted later and asked me to share with you, points to Whitman's further coverup in an attempt to help Giuliani's bid for President.

Thanks Deb for covering this for our readers.  read more »

Some of the latest examples of a leftist circular firing squad have been many who complain that Congress is doing nothing to get us out of Iraq and some of the Hillary Bots who claim progressives in general, and Daily Kos in particular, are a bunch of atheist, anti-religion nut jobs.

Both accusations are untrue and here is one item that counters BOTH. This comes from a DAILY KOS diary by someone with the screen name PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIAN who is pushing progressives (and Christians, we can assume) to support HR 455, one of SEVERAL bills in Congress designed to block the McCain/Bush/Lieberman escalation and to bring our soldiers home from the Iraq quagmire. I sure hope those who have been denegrating congress for not acting to end the war and those who accuse progressives of being anti-religion will take note and help Progressive Christian in getting HR 455 passed.

On January 12, my congressman, Jerrold Nadler (NY-8), introduced H.R. 455, the Protect the Troops and Bring Them Home Act of 2007, a simple bill that limits the use of funding in Iraq for force protection, troop withdrawal and Iraq reconstruction. We spoke with Congressman Nadler's office last week and verified that he is still quite actively promoting this legislation.  read more »