KQV is asking the following in their poll today:

Vice President Dick Cheney is considered by many political experts to be one of the most powerful Vice Presidents in U.S. history. He is also one of the most controversial and has been a key voice in promoting the Bush Administration agenda.

How would you rate Vice President Dick Cheny's performance in office?

Sadly, he is running 58% Good, 9% Fair, 33% Poor.

Lets see if we can fix that.

http://www.kqv.com/phonepoll.php

This is a crossposting from Comments From Left Field. I felt the strong Pennsylania presence here would benefit from it.

Many thanks to Mark Crispin Miller for posting the full audio of a speech given by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at a private party in Georgia on August 2. I have clipped out the relevant two minutes of this speech and transcribed it for everyone to see. Bottom line, Schumer admits to, in effect, a new Democratic strategy whereby he and the DSCC leadership will choose who will run against vulnerable Republicans. The case he uses is our own fight for the seat held by Rick Santorum.

This morning I turned on my Sirius satellite radio to tune in to Air America Radio 143 and Morning Sedition, which has been my usual morning routine since December of last year, yet the strangest thing happened, it was gone. In it's place was duplicate programming from Sirius Left which usually resides one channel down the dial at 143. Now I have to say, the only reason I purchased Sirius was to get Air America. Of course I have greatly enjoyed the other programming but the main purpose was Air Amercia. So, after fumbling through their website to find a customer service number I called up Sirius only to be told that Air America decided to drop Sirius to go exclusively with XM. WTF?

I have two initial observations about today's press conference between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Jaafari. First, I wish I could see the back of the room because someone on Bush's team has to be coaching him to stretch out his answers. Even Bill Clinton did not ramble on like this man. Second and more important, Bush was asked by a member of the Iraqi press for a response to the following request by Iraqi MP's:

Eighty two Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum have pressed for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation troops from their country. The Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist legislators made the call in a letter sent by Falah Hassan Shanshal of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest bloc in parliament, to speaker Hajem Al-Hassani, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). "We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw. Our request was ignored," read the latter(sic), made public on Sunday, June 19.

In a bizarre response President Bush came back with the following:

"there are not going to be any timetables" for withdrawal of American forces and vowed victory over insurgents attempting to prevent establishment of a democratic government under a new constitution.

I am crossposting this here from Comments From Left Field since it has received little attention.

Fellow Pennsylvanian Chris Bowers over at MyDD makes a very good point in this post today.

...the more I become engaged with local politics I realize how many elements of the Democratic Party remain profoundly unreformed. In fact, from what I have seen over the past year, it would be difficult for me to believe that there is a less reformed Democratic Party than the one that can be found right in my own backyard here in Philadelphia and here in Pennsylvania.

This is the same feeling that I got when I moved to PA and started becoming active in politics and if you come here often you are aware of the fact that this is a pet peeve of mine. As a result of its long time hold on power the PA Democratic Party, not unlike many other things in the Commonwealth, remains trapped in the past. The good news is this is by no means an untenable situation.

The problem I see is that young progressive Democrats take a look at the system, cry foul then throw up their hands and bitch. If systems theory taught me anything it is that you will have a far greater chance of reforming/changing a system, in this case the PA Democratic Party, if you do so from the inside. Now it is worth noting that the average age of a committee person in the State of PA is 70 so it understandable when those people continue to play by the rules that they are used to. If we wish to effect change within the Democratic Party it is imperative that we inject ourselves into the system.

As I stated in this post the other day, it is my belief that the Pennsylvania Young Democrats provides and excellent opportunity for reform minded Dems to take part in the system. In speaking with the newly elected President it seems clear that the organization is chomping at the bit to involve those of us from the "new media" world. As a result we have a golden opportunity to get off the sidelines and get in the game. I will be working very closely with the Young Dems over the next little while and would like to extend an offer to those of you who are interested including those from Atrios, MyDD and others to join with me. If you truly seek reform there is no better way to facilitate it than to participate.