pods.swedesforobama.com

"because blogs are so 2006"
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Good in January
Sweden ranked second on environment
Howard Deans smacks Wolf Blitzer
Why We Fight comes to the US
FOX News suffering in Sweden
Toby Keith - lifetime Democrat
Tom and Jacks Prison Break
Colbert pulls an O'Reilly
Bobby Kennedy Jr in Stockholm
Al Gore 2.0
John Kerry on Rachel Maddow
College student confuses the prez
Thom Hartmann talks about the bible and Brokeback Mountain
From our very own best of '05: Bright Eyes played "When the President talks to god" on (boring boring) Leno. NPR version (.mp3)

Bad in January
Lindsey Graham is our Best Director
Christian groups post-tsunami
O'Reilly lies on Letterman
Free Press and the Oprah
Forgot about Clinton vs Osama?
Fun with Sean Hannity
Sweden in the Guardian and Newsweek

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The Oprah and TDS are the ones keeping the US in the top 50 in the Free Press Index. Truly sad.

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Welcome back Toby!!

"Lifetime Democrat"

Mp3, 1 min
20 sec, 800kb

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Exchange of the day, sunday:

Chris "black sheep" Wallace; "Governor, we're running out of money, but I just want to press this..."

Howard Dean (laughing), "Yes we are, rapidly, so we need a new party controlling Washington!"

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Al Gore 2.0

Webby Award winner* Al Gore is back with a vengeance.

An Inconvenient Truth

*The Webby Lifetime Achievement Award: Former Vice President Al Gore
Setting the record straight on one of recent history's most persistent political myths, The Webby Awards will present Former Vice President Al Gore with The Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of the pivotal role he has played in the development of the internet over the past three decades. Vint Cerf, widely credited as one of the "fathers of the internet," will present Vice President Gore with the award.

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Tarja Halonen wins re-election in Finland. Thanks to who?

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John Amato of Crooks & Liars writes about abstinence-Ann latest escapades at the Huffington Post.
Poor Ann, abstinence only and never married at 44 (according to her)?

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I don't know if someone worked for a long time on this or just through it together (since all the components were already there).

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S.F.O. goes
entertainment

Original rocker Mozart turns 250 and wests and ponytails are back. Finally!!

The greatest iMix you're ever gonna find in late January

I can't quit you

Try to imagine a world where the Dana Carvey Show wasn't cancelled.

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No Rush, sorry but you got it wrong.
Democrats want to kill Osama, while Republicans want to do business with him.

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Who's your favorite?

George Galloway meet Uday Hussein or
Donald Rumsfeld meet Saddam Hussein

They're both nutjobs, but I have to go with Rummy. Uday got a pennant from George, but Saddam got helicopters, cash and a "get out of jail"-card from Donald.

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Sweden is ranked second in the world on the environment (after New Zealand), this according to the 2006 Environmental Performance Index presented at Davos.
The Local has the story

The Local also has the scoop about the swedish princess who now lives in NY.
The one who looked like a slut according to wacky "rev" Fred Phelps.

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A Kansas State student confuses the prez. Think Progress has the video.

Q: My name is Tiffany Cooper. I’m a sophomore here at Kansas State and I was just wanting to get your comments about education. Recently 12.7 billion dollars was cut from education. I was just wondering how is that supposed to help our futures?

Bush: Actually, I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it.

Student Loans: On Dec. 21, 2005, the Senate passed $12.7 billion in cuts to education programs — “the largest cut in student college loan programs in history.” Vice President Cheney cast the deciding vote in favor of the cuts. The bill also fixed the interest rate on student loans at 6.8 percent, “even if commercial rates are lower.” Despite Bush’s claims, students will be left off the program.

Pell Grants: Pell Grants have been frozen or cut since 2002; they are now stuck at a maximum of $4,050 . In his 2000 election campaign, President Bush promised to increase the maximum Pell Grant amount to $5,100 . “ From 2004 to 2005, 24,000 students lost their Pell grants , according to a report pre-pared by the Congressional Research Service. This was the first drop in the number of students receiving the grants in several years; the number had been growing steadily since 1999.”

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Nick Lampson for district 22
Re-districted by Delay, but now he's back.... with a vengeance (dum dum dum).

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It's just Pat!!

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Now this is funny.

"This is a global war on terror. This is a war for you or for us to win. You need patience... He sounds like Ken Mehlman when he's saying that only less gay. I mean this is ridiculous."
- Rachel Maddow

Of course manboy pretends he was insulted and moves on, this until the RNC Talking Points about the subject is released.

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Who thought I would ever link to MichaelMoore.com but this is kinda funny. Jihadball

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Bobby Kennedy Jr visits Stockholm for Waterkeeper.

Sadly the only ones in the press interested in more then "What do you think of GANTs clothes?" was the sleezy tabloid Expressen (in swedish). There he at least got to talk about something other then the outfits, sadly they turned what could have been an interesting debate on the environment to a "Bush is our worst president ever"-headline (of course they left out "on the environment").
Same lazy MSM.

Stopglobalwarming.org
Our favorite Illinois Marcher

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This is hilarious. From the Hill:

Last week, the Schmidt campaign touted a poll that shows she “had achieved a name identification and awareness level extremely high for a freshman member of Congress.”

Yes, that's right. Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) has achived a name identification a awarness level extremely high for a freshman member of Congress.
Hahahahahaha!!!

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Kent Jones did a story about the blackbears earlier (.mp3)

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7 + 9 years old = Lazy Sunday 2
Brilliant!!

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Great documentary is making its way to the US.

Why We Fight by Eugene Jarecki

Eugene on the Rachel Maddow Show
Mp3, 10 min 20 sec, 6 mb

Eugene was on FOX News but sadly the only clip they showed featured Bill Kristol and Richard Perle (suprise suprise).

The documentary is about how the military industrial complex has a hold of US policies and how it's pretty much impossible for the government to get out of it by now.
There's an amazing scene at the end when sen. John McCain, who have been talking about how bad this whole thing is, gets a call from the vice president and you can really see the fear in his eyes.
"Does he know I just talked about him and will I make it out of the building alive?"

Question: How do you keep money pouring in to the cold war project of the B-2 bomber in these war on terror days?
Answer: Build it in all states, then no one wants to see it cancelled.

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Quotes of the day:

"If Al Gore wants to be the Democrats voice on foreign policies we welcome that"
- Scott McClellan

"If Scott McClellan wants to be the voice of the White House we welcome that"
- Al Franken

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Remember George Clooney, who corrected Bill O'Reilly about who was the Red Cross and who was the United Way?
Appearently he's not only a kinda witty guy, but he's also an actor. Who knew!?!
This is him excepting an award of some sort, thanking not only the actor-people but also Jack-off.

It seems that some of the right-wing bloggers are mad at George, "racial slurs" etc. Sadly this PC crowd lacks any sense of humor.

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With the background noise gone we can finally get some sleep

It seems that TV8 (who airs FOX News and Bloomberg in Sweden) has changed its programming and are now airing more and more of their own produced shows, which of course means that they will leave less and less room for FOX News . Ha!!

TV8 started airing Bill O'Reilly post-9/11 and then put FOX News on to fill out their dead air at the time of the last invasion of Iraq.
During the whole time they've had on both O'Reilly and FOX News they've "left the commercial slots open" (no ads!?!?!).
Now, we addressed TV8 about this early last year in an e-mail, asking why they were undermining their own (excellent) shows by airing the FOX News garbage, especially as they weren't making any money.
Is FOX News really that cheap to air that they can put it on as background noise??
We didn't get any respons, with TV8 not responding to any e-mail directly but only through their website, where they of course didn't feel like addressing this issue. It would have been nice if they did, since we weren't the only ones asking about this...

Questions about FOX News were also raised on the investigating journalism program Mediamagasinets show about Al-Jazeera and FOX News.
Their premise was that TV8, with FOX News, had been picked to be in the basic package for all new digital TV users. Why should the swedish digital TV-network house FOX News in it's basic package (leaving out other channels), when digital TV has been built by the goverment and they should only promote non-partisan/political TV.
They also questioned the use of a former MP as a lobbyist by MTG (who owns TV8) when they tried, and succeeded, to put TV8 in the basic digital TV-package.
During the show Mediamagasinet used FOX News coverage from Malmo and Rosengard that was, according to FOX News, in flames after racial riots. Mediamagasinet pointed out FOX News editing of the segment, where they put two attacks on a mosque together as one event, when in fact there was much more time between them. This to make it seem like the problem with swedes not liking muslims (which of course exists) was a much bigger problem then it is, using it as evidence to prove their believes that with muslims in Europe* comes trouble.
* read the US

Even TV8s head honcho Anna Rastner said that they had FOX News on to give people "a peek in to how the Bush adminstration works and thinks".
Well she's right about that.

But now the end is coming closer.
Last year TV8 tried to put re-runs of the O'Reilly Factor on during prime time (he's on at 2 am otherwise). It didn't work so they put him on a bit earlier, then a bit later and finally not at all. Bill lost to a kids show with a man dressed in a bearsuit and the news... in finnish!!

Now with O'Reilly on at 2 am and the normal swede only catching a couple of minutes of Britney Hume before falling to sleep on his IKEA couch, it looks more and more like we finally is getting rid of that irritating background noise that has been buggin us since late 2001. And maybe, just maybe, we can get some sleep.

Note: TV8 loses money every year, they're results are no longer announced with the rest of MTGs TV-channels, Viasat. They have moved TV8 to the main company, making its losses "disappear".

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Proud member of
Concerned Alumni
of Princeton

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It's a sad story with the killed civilians in Pakistan. You can always try to tell yourself "it's war", but that rarely helps. To make it even worse I got reminded of when Clinton actually tried to kill Osama in a similar way and the reaction then.

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We have a new Jeff Gannon!!!
Finally, it took several months but now everything can go back to normal at the press conferences.

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"Will vicious dems pay for
driving Alito's wife to tears?"
Newshounds MediaMatters C&L
Newshounds2

We have no choice, we wanted to keep this award open at least a couple of months, but now the time has come to hand it out.

"For his tireless efforts to bring out the best of all the actors and beautifully setting the scene for them to shine while never taking credit for their performance, the SFO award for Best Director goes to.....

Coach Graham"

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we bring out the War on
Christmas graphics for:

The Culture War

Colbert pulls an O'Reilly on Conan.
Brilliant, absolutly brilliant.

old: O'Reilly lies on Letterman.

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Oh my god, Ted Kennedy is actually alive. The exchange between Ted and Specter about CAP (Concerned Alumni of Princeton).
Video of Kennedy going on record.

Personally I agree with Al Franken, that maybe Sam didn't go to any meetings but put CAP on his job application to look good in the eyes of the Reagan people.

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updated!!

Sorry all Prison Break fans, but I had to do it. You will never be clean again.

Must admit that Toms plan to get his buddy Jack out of jail is quite smart.
Can't wait for the second season!! Rumour has it that a former brain of a president moves in to the cell next to Tom and Jack and it's "prison love" at first sight.

note to self: next time, think more about where to place Jacks head, there are a lot of dirty minds out there.

C&L now has a video that will make you sick, and me not regretting the placing of Jacks head.

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The fourth SSG soldier has finally left the hospital.
Find more about this here.

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Sean Hannity is a funny guy, not funny haha, but funny in a I'll-say-anything-and-
look-serious-when-doing-it-but-really-have-
no-clue kinda way.
Here Sean is angry that evil anti-people are trying to turn the mine tragedy into politics.

BTW Remember when Sean was down in Florida instruction nurses during the Schiavo tragedy?

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The Guardian writes about "the swedish way" and Newsweek does a follow up. As always the local swedish media focuses on the bad press we get and forgets all the good. Headlines like "Newsweek: Sweden sucks" (well not really but close).
Truly the most swedish of all ways:
"we're good, hell great, but lets not say it"

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Don't cry wolfie
Just cause Howard had the facts right and you were clueless doesn't mean that you're a bad journalist. Or maybe it does...

Now you can put Howard on your cellphone. Could be ringtone of the year.
Howard smacks Wolf (.mp3)

...and the Washington Post turns into the Washington Times.

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"In America, The land of the free, they said, And of opportunity, In a just and a truthful way.
But where the president, Is never black, female or gay, And until that day
You've got nothing to say to me, To help me believe..."

Songs on upcoming Morrissey album.

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"We can't wait, we gotta do the hard work now"

John Kerry, senator and easy rider, is interviewed on the Rachel Maddow show
mp3, from 6/1-06, 11 min 29 sec, 6,5mb

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They're back!!

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Thom Hartmann talks to Don Alexander from csnbooks.com about Brokeback Mountain and why shellfish is worse then men who love each other.
mp3, from 4/1-06

Thom later has a caller on who explains why Sodom was destroyed, the not helping the poor part that is often "forgotten".

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Jack spills it and the Raw Story has some gossip about how all this came out.

People on both sides, well one Democrat and a whole bunch of Republicans, are in trubble.

How many Republican "operatives" do you think, at this moment, is looking for a Abramoff - Clinton connection??
Two, fourteen or maybe twenty.

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"That's because Mr. Letterman is a smart guy who can spot a phony with telescopic accuracy and expects his guests to bring something to the table. If a guest begins to sink on this show, the bottom is a long way down."
- Bill O'Reilly about Letterman in 2001

You have to fight humor with humor. We could already have a winner for the best clip of '06. Clip of O'Reilly on Letterman

...and of course O'Reilly lied.

Most people defending O'Reilly goes to the part where he spins off the subject (suprise suprise) and talks about how no one who blows up children can be called a freedom fighter. Aah, good old RNC talking points rhetoric. Even though it had little to do with what actually was being talked about, Cindy Sheehan, O'Reilly tried to spin her claimed reference to insurgents in Iraq as freedom fighters, the crowd couldn't say no to that.
Who could disagree with that by the way? That's the whole point of getting your opion from a talking point, they're already tested and should be able to hold up, at least on a comedy show.

Naturally O'Reilly has never heard Sheehan make her claims about freedom fighters, something also lost on those standing up for O'Reilly with Lettermans "I don't watch your show" quote, yet he continues to fill his "news program" with these hearsay "facts" and "some sources say" claims.

Remember when Howard Dean was on Letterman and Dave questioned Deans claims that all Republicans are corrupt? Well I don't blame you if you don't remember, cause no one bitched and moaned about that. There were no blogging going on about the twisted politics of the Late Show.

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2005

Good moment for us:
We manage to stay away from a date rape joke when talking about this guy.

Not so good moment for us:
In the middle of a O'Reilly fury, the lines between O'Reilly and all americans become blurry and a fat americans joke turns unclear and maybe a bit ugly (!?!?!).

Good moment for all:
Bright Eyes plays "When the President talks to god" on (boring boring) Leno.
From NPR (.mp3)

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Scott's mom switches.

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Pushy christian missions in post-tsunami Thailand

10 year old Mucc Nomnois from a buddhist home wearing a shirt saying "God loves you"

Many thai children feel used by religious organisations that harass them in post-tsunami Thailand. It's Save the Children from the UK and Sweden that have conducted a survey of 5000 thai children who are now living alone or with their parents in shelters in the tsunami striken country. Besides the obvious fears and problems of living through one of the worst natural disasters ever, the children also described that they felt harassed by christian groups when they approach them.
– It's like the eighteen hundreds all over again. People are forced to convert or help out in different missions to receive food or clothes, says Inger Ostergren from Save the Children in Bangkok
– Some of these christian churches are very pushy when approaching the children in these areas.

Anna-Lena Haverdahl have read the Save the Children report and writes about her experiences when traveling through Thailand and meeting hindu and buddhist children wearing "Jesus saves" T-shirts. (in swedish).

The Telegraph also has a piece on this.
"Missionary groups stress that they offer help to all, regardless of their religion. But there is frequently a co-incidence between conversions and the receipt of aid. "
"A lot convert to Christian because the Christians came to help them. We don't have money from the temples to give to the victims, but Buddhist monks have good wishes. Maybe you have a new house now but Buddhism teaches you how to survive."

One of the women interviewed in Haverdahls report was from the Duang Prateep Foundation.

The whole Save the Children UK survey (together with Unicef) will not be made public, but you can find more about this subject here (older stuff):

Villagers furious with Christian Missionaries (bottom of page)

Scientology moves in after Tsunami