Your Daily Politics Video Blog: In the past week John McCain and his surrogates have done their best to focus the entire McCain-Obama debate on the question of which candidate was right about the troop surge in Iraq. So it was a little surprising to see McCain on the CBS Evening News last night get a basic historical fact about the surge so plainly wrong.

After FOX thwarted Nas' attempt to deliver our 620,000-signature petition in Manhattan yesterday, Nas outfoxed FOX.  Nas took the petition over to The Colbert Report, where he and Colbert lit into FOX for its racist slander against the Obamas as they literally sat on our boxes of petition signatures. 

So many highlights: Nas calling Colbert a gangster host; Colbert dropping rhymes like atom bombs; Colbert declaring Tucker Carlson less qualified than Lil Jon to host the news; Nas ending the show with his anti-FOX anthem, "Sly Fox."  But what really stood out for me was the sight of Nas and Colbert using our petition as a table for their discussion.  What a clear, powerful message that sends about how many people are standing up to FOX's overt racism.   

Tune into MeettheBloggers.org on Friday at 1pm ET/10am PT when our guest will be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).  This week, our panel of bloggers will include Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog, Nico Pitney of The Huffington Post, and Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, who will discuss the energy crisis and the proposal to lift the ban on offshore drilling.

To get the conversation going, Meet the Bloggers host Cenk Uygur has weighed in with his thoughts on offshore drilling over at HuffPo.  Also, don't miss Chris Bowers' piece, Just Let Them Do It, for another excellent take on this debate.

And if you missed last week's premiere of Meet the Bloggers with guest Arianna Huffington, you can check it out here.

This month we've spent time with a member of Congress trying to move voting to the Weekend, and we've chatted with the Speaker of the House, who indicated she would support such legislation.

Last weekend at Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas, Libertarian presidential candidate and former U.S. Representative Bob Barr told Jacob Soboroff he doesn't know why it is we vote on Tuesday, but that he'd support voting on weekends to make voting more convenient.

Barr: "I'll tell you - we need to do something - and we need to do a lot of different things - and that may be one of the things we need to do. As President, I would sign such legislation."

For more: http://whytuesday.org

P.U.M.A is a swift boating organization, and we have proof! Don't let the GOP swift boat a truly remarkable candidate!

http://yestodemocracy.com

When Republican presidential candidate John McCain got in a fight with the New York Times editorial page this week, Fox News was right there to stick to the McCain campaign talking points even when confronted with contradicting facts. To show you what I mean, I put together the several clips in this video.

In a new installment of Bush League Justice today, guest Julian Epstein, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, stated that Republicans will admit, off-camera, that the case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman was fixed.

The segment concentrated on Karl Rove finally giving written answers to questions, NOT under oath, about the Siegelman case. The questions, which were posed by Lamar Smith (R-TX), and answers can be read at Talking Points Memo.

While the general consensus is that the softball questions were a "pathetic attempt to save Karl Rove," the effort appears to have failed. In the video above, Epstein states that Rove actually appears to "incriminate" himself by refusing to answer a specific question about whether he contacted non-state officials.

Marcy Wheeler agrees with Epstein over at emptywheel: "In a classic non-denial denial, Karl Rove makes it clear that he did talk to people about Siegelman's prosecution--even while he denies that he spoke to anyone in DOJ about it." And Larisa Alexandrovna thinks, "This is getting to be rather fun," before proceeding to rip apart Rove's answer with the facts. She also poses six real questions she'd like to see asked of Rove.

Links available at www.hotpotatomash.com

Send Karl Rove to Jail!

Generations of Americans have worked to build a country that is second to none. But now, foreign governments are using billions in oil profits to buy into U.S. companies responsible for our defense, energy and homeland security. And they are using high-powered lobbyists and private buyout firms who don't have to reveal their role in our national security. Tell Congress that we have a right to know when foreign countries buy into American companies vital to our economic prosperity and national defense.

More at the SEIU.

Interviews with Alzheimer's patients indicated that an overwhelming majority are, in fact, perfectly fine.

"Overall, the image of this particular American Democrat in the Mideast, using tough language about terror but weaving it into a broader global vision that includes an emphasis on multilateralism and true energy reform -- even as Republicans are embracing some of his war-on-terror policies -- is an undeniably powerful one," writes Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo, of Obama's Mideast trip and press conference in Jordan. tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com

During the first press conference of his trip, Obama stated, "There is security progress, but now we need a political solution" in Iraq.

Obama further noted that Iraqi leaders want a clear date for withdrawal of U.S. troops. "They do not want an open-ended presence of U.S. combat forces. The prime minister said that now is an appropriate time to start to plan for the reorganization of our troops in Iraq, including their numbers and missions. He stated his hope that U.S. combat forces could be out of Iraq in 2010," Obama said.

The press conference in Jordan came after Obama toured war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he met with U.S. military leaders, Iraqi leaders and U.S. troops.

Senator Jim Webb is one of the rising stars in the Democratic Party. Webb is a decorated Marine who served in Vietnam and was former Secretary of the Navy under the Reagan administration. In 2006, he was elected senator of Virginia after defeating the Republican incumbent George Allen in a tight and closely watched race. I spoke with him today about how he sees the challenges facing America and the future of the Democratic party.

Yesterday, I wrote about rapper Nas joining ColorOfChange.org, MoveOn.org, and Brave New Films to tell FOX News to quit its racist attacks on the Obamas.  Well this afternoon, Nas joined us in presenting a 600,000-signature petition to FOX's Manhattan HQ.  Word on the street is that FOX refused to accept our petition, which isn't very surprising considering FOX is so set in its bigoted ways.  However, The Colbert Report accepted the petition instead, and they're planning to feature Nas tonight on the show.  Stayed tuned for that.

While we couldn't take the petition directly to FOX, we still managed to get our message across.  600,000 signatures attacted Nas to our cause, which in turn caught Colbert's eye.  This only amplifies our message: FOX must stop injecting racism, prejudice, and fear into our political dialogue.

In his "Generation Q" op-ed, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asserted that young activists today are a little "too quiet, too online" for their own good, and that clicks of a mouse cannot rival the vitality of an in-person movement. But what if young activists could combine the in-your-face nature of an offline campaign, with the internet's ability to spread their message to millions?

The Harvard Right to Serve Tour is using YouTube to do just that. As part of the the Tour, openly gay Harvard University students are visiting military recruitment centers across the Eastern Seaboard, trying to enlist – and uploading video footage of each encounter onto YouTube.

"We're trying to show the country the discriminatory practices that are in place, under 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'," says lead campaign organizer and Harvard Divinity School student Jake Reitan. But in addition to that, the campaign is also demonstrating the power of what can happen when activists mix traditional tactics like sit-ins, sign-waving, and submitting to arrest, with new media methods like YouTube to amplify their cause.

Mr. Friedman: we hope you’re taking notice.

Despite ethical concerns about testing on humans, researchers say their work was necessary to determine the boundary between garbage and food.

From Think Progress:

During an interview with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), CBS Evening News host Katie Couric noted that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said recently that “there might have been improved security [in Iraq] even without the surge” and asked McCain, “What’s your response to that?”

After first calling Obama’s claim “a false depiction of what actually happened,” McCain proceeded to falsely claim that the surge “began the Anbar awakening“:

McCAIN: I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.

But in a puzzling move, the CBS Evening News did not actually televise McCain’s false claim tonight. As MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported, “CBS curiously, to say the least, left it on the edit room floor. It aired Katie Couric’s question, but in response, it inserted part of McCain’s answer to another question instead.”

The leaked video George Bush does not want you to see. The president called for all cameras to be switched off before this speech at a closed-door fundraiser for Republican Pete Olson in Houston.  He then admits that the American economy is in serious trouble:

"There's no question about it, Wall Street got drunk, that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

Guess this is one of those YouTube moments Bush fears.

More over at ABC's Political Radar.

My newest video features John McCain talking about the Iraq war from 2002 through the present, exposing -- in his own words -- the lie behind his claim that he was the war's "greatest critic." It demonstrates his chilling commitment to fighting this war no matter what the people of America -- or Iraq -- want.

It is long -- nine minutes, thirty seconds -- but much of the material it contains will likely be new to you...and devastating to McCain.

Please share it with your family, friends, and acquaintances throughout the netroots. We may not have a cable TV channel, but with YouTube, through word of mouth, we can level the playing field -- so please digg it, reddit it, post it in blogs and comments.

The UpTake's Chuck Olsen interviews author Irwin Tang about his book, "Gook: John McCain's Racism and Why It Matters."

McCain first used the word "gook" in the mass media in his 1973 article for U.S. News & World Report. The word appears 12 times in the article and is available online here. 

Most recently, McCain used the term in his 2000 presidential campaign, as documented by the San Francisco Chronicle. 

To learn more about Mr. Tang's book, which also details McCain's connection to white supremacist groups, visit his web site: http://irwinbooks.com/

Does John McCain even know where Iraq is on a map? Here's a hint: it doesn't border Pakistan. On GRITtv, Laura Flanders and media expert Jeff Cohen discuss McCain's lack of geopolitical bonafides.