Comments on the last presidential election debate in the USA, shown in this video, between John McCain and Barack Obama are here.
Hysterical rightist attacks on Obama: here.
15 Arrested Outside Presidential Debate in Protest Led by Iraq Veterans Against the War: here.
Humour about the US presidential elections: here.
Anti-ACORN Messages Threaten Staff and Obama (AUDIO): here.
McCain Urged Reagan Admin To Meet Terror Groups [RENAMO in Mozambique] Without Pre-Conditions: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Posted by: “razldazl” razldazl@iinet.net.au
Wed Oct 15, 2008 9:18 am (PDT)
Sam Stein
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-news/reporting/sam-stein
Reporting From DC*
Bush Strategist: McCain Knows He Put Country At Risk With Palin Pick
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/14/bush-strategist-mccain-kn_n_134570.html
October 14, 2008 01:18 PM
Matthew Dowd, a prominent political consultant and chief strategist for George W. Bush’s reelection campaign eviscerated John McCain on Tuesday for his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.
Dowd proclaimed that, in his heart of hearts, McCain knew he put the country at risk with his VP choice and that he would “have to live” with that fact for the rest of his career.
“They didn’t let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP,” Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. “When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race… as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible.”
Saying that Palin was a “net negative” on the ticket, he went on: “[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with… He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that.”
The other panelists were surprised, a bit, by Dowd’s bluntness. Not least because McCain’s well-known campaign motto is “country first.”
“No, I don’t agree,” said Mark McKinnon, a former McCain aide, after chiding Dowd for claiming particular insight into McCain’s soul.
“Well,” responded Dowd, “that’s even more disturbing than my thought” — the implication being that it would be truly frightening if McCain didn’t know how bad Palin truly was.
/Time/ columnist Joe Klein summed up what seemed to be the panel’s Palin consensus.
“It was a gimmick,” he said of the pick. “It was one of the most disastrous decisions I have seen in a presidential campaign since I’ve begun covering them.”
Later in the session, Hilary Rosen, the Huffington Post’s Washington editor at large, noted that the Palin pick had been successful in energizing the Republican base — and McCain himself. But Dowd wasn’t biting.
“To me it is like Halloween,” he said. “You get energized by eating all that candy at night but then you feel sick the next day.”
LikeLike
Slate Magazine
National Review/ Crackup!
Mayhem at a conservative magazine.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008
—————————–
If you doubt that John McCain’s impending defeat has the right in full-fledged crackup mode, maybe you haven’t logged onto /National Review /Online this week.
As recently as Sept. 24, NRO demonstrated that it had a mind of its own by publishing “Palin Problem http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDZiMDhjYTU1NmI5Y2MwZjg2MWNiMWMyYTUxZDkwNTE= ,” a column in which Kathleen Parker urged Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to give up her vice-presidential nomination on the grounds that she is “out of her league.” Granted, the column doesn’t originate at NRO; it was syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Still, it did NRO credit to run the thing at all.
Now, however, the magazine appears to be embroiled in a family feud of a sort. Its founder’s son, Christopher Buckley, had been writing the magazine’s back-page feature. This week, however, Buckley the Younger endorsed Barack Obama http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama for president. That isn’t particularly shocking. Unlike WFB (as the father was known in /National Review/), CTB—the “T” is for “Taylor”—has never been a “movement” conservative. He’s a humor writer and /littérateur/* *who tends to lean conservative when he leans at all, which is seldom. Moreover, as CTB points out, even WFB, who /was/ a movement conservative—the movement being WFB’s own creation—crossed the aisle on occasion, supporting Sen. Joe Lieberman (now returning the favor by supporting John McCain for president) and even Rep. Allard Lowenstein http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuallife/lowensteinbio.htm , the liberal Democrat best-known for starting the Dump Johnson movement in 1967. Nonetheless, CTB’s endorsement stirred resentment from /National Review/ readers—700 angry e-mails, according to CTB http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-14/sorry-dad-i-was-fired/ ; 100, according to /National Review/ editor Rich Lowry http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWEwZmYwNDE0YWI4OGI2ZTZlN2EwYTBhNmZlZDliMjc —and
CTB felt “the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my
column there.” This offer “was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich
Lowry,” CTB writes. (CTB published both his endorsement of BHO
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama/ and the column about his resignation http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-14/sorry-dad-i-was-fired/ in the Daily Beast http://www.thedailybeast.com/ , Tina Brown’s new Web aggregator.)
Lowry, or “RL” (he doesn’t have a middle initial I can find quickly on the Web) seems to feel http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWEwZmYwNDE0YWI4OGI2ZTZlN2EwYTBhNmZlZDliMjc CTB is overdramatizing the situation:
Over the weekend, Chris wrote us a jaunty e-mail with the subject line “A Sincere Offer,” in which he offered to resign his column on /NR/’s back page and said that if we accepted, there “would be no hard feelings, only warmest regards and understanding.” We took the offer sincerely. Chris had done us the favor of writing the column beginning seven issues ago on a “trial basis” (his words), while our regular back-page columnist, Mark Steyn, was on hiatus. Now, Mark is back to writing again, and—I’m delighted to say—will be on /NR/’s back-page in the new issue.
Let’s review the bidding. CTB says he offered to resign from /NR/, and that RL was so eager to accept that CTB felt he’d been “effectively fatwahed”—if not by the magazine itself then by its subscribers and the larger conservative movement, for which CTB has acquired a distaste. (“I didn’t leave the Republican party. It left me.”) WFB, CTB doesn’t need to add, was himself a bit disenchanted with the conservative movement’s direction during his last years.
Meanwhile, RL, on NRO, says there was nothing to resign /from/ because it was a temporary gig and the guy he was subbing for was now back in the saddle. The writer, Steyn, had been otherwise engaged defending himself against hate speech charges in Canada http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmVmYzFlNGRhNzhhNGJkMzRlZDE0Nzc1NjFjNTg0NTY= over a /MacLean’s http://www.macleans.ca/culture/entertainment/article.jsp?content=20061023_134898_134898 article that predicted dire consequences from Muslim immigration throughout Europe. On Oct. 10, Steyn beat the rap http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=873681 (his article was found not to “rise … to the level of hatred and contempt,” which sounds to me like a backhanded insult; click here http://www.bchrt.bc.ca/decisions/2008/pdf/oct/378_Elmasry_and_Habib_v_Rogers_Publishing_and_MacQueen_%28No_4%29_2008_BCHRT_378.pdf
for the decision) and was therefore once again available to write for
/NR/’s back page.
CTB disputes this. “Last spring, Rich asked me if I would take over the Steyn column because Steyn was ‘giving it up,'” CTB e-mailed me. “I said okay. That’s it in a nutshell. The notion that I was temping is simply not accurate.”
WTF?
If all this makes /NR/ seem a tad dysfunctional, get a load of this posting http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTlkMTdmNDRkMTM1ODZkNGNkZmRiNDFjMDE4YzRjMjg= on NRO by Andy McCarthy, alleging that Barack Obama didn’t write /Dreams From My Father/. The book, McCarthy writes, was in fact written by the former Weather Underground bomb-thrower Bill Ayers. The logic of this argument, which is accompanied by a remarkable dearth of evidence, is founded on the patently false conceit that Ayers’ 2001 memoir, /Fugitive Days/, was well-written. Excuse me, but this is a book that begins with the words, “Memory is a motherfucker.” It goes downhill from there .
[/Author’s note/:/ /CTB’s message arrived after I initially filed this column. I added it after checking my e-mail at 10:45 p.m.]
/Timothy Noah is a senior writer at *Slate*/.
*Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2202331/*
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
LikeLike
Posted by: “Rebecca Voss” rebeccavoss13@yahoo.com hoopcentraal
Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:18 am (PDT)
An invitation to ‘PROTEST JOHN MCCAIN @ BCC WITH THE BREVARD “BILLIONAIRES FOR BUSH”‘ —
click here to view the invitation and submit your response:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gshxrv
—
Hey all,
This event was noted in the Florida Today paper so the media will be there so lets take a cue from those Alaskans who protested against Bush in drag and show EVERYONE that THE SPACE COAST IS IS OBAMA COUNTRY!!!!!
FIRED UP?? READY TO GO???
Becky
LikeLike
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 16, 2008
CONTACT: Jason Lemieux, jasonlemieux@ivaw.org, 760-409-9403 or
Kristofer Goldsmith, kgoldy1985@gmail.com, 516-457-1260
Iraq War Veterans Arrested While Attempting to Deliver Questions to Obama and McCain
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. One hour before the final presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, fourteen members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) marched in formation to Hofstra University to present questions to the candidates. IVAW had requested permission from debate moderator Bob Schieffer to ask their questions during the debate, but received no response.
The contingent of veterans in dress and combat uniforms attempted to enter the building where the debate was to be held in order to ask questions about poor veterans’ healthcare and supporting war resisters of the candidates, but were turned back by police. IVAW members at the front of the formation were immediately arrested, and others were pushed back into the crowd by police on horseback. Several members were injured, including former Army Sergeant Nick Morgan who suffered a broken cheekbone when he was trampled by police horses before being arrested.
“Neither of the candidates has shown real support for service members and veterans. We came here to try and have serious questions answered, questions that we as veterans of the Iraq war have a right to ask, but instead we were arrested. We will continue to ask these questions no matter who is elected. We believe that the time has come to end this war and bring our troops home, and we will be pushing for that no matter what happens in this election.” said Jason Lemieux, a former Sergeant in the US Marine Corps who served three tours in Iraq, and member of IVAW.
A total of ten veterans were arrested during the action, including Matthis Chiroux (Army Sergeant), Kristofer Goldsmith (Army Sergeant), Adam Kokesh (Marine Sergeant), Mike Spinato, Geoff Millard (Army Sergeant), Marlisa Grogan (Marine Captain), Nathan Peld (Navy, 1998-2004), Nick Morgan (Army Sergeant), James Gilligan (Marine Corps, 6 years) and Jose Vasquez (Army & Army Reserves, 1992-2007).
###
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded in July of 2004 to allow servicemen and women from all branches of the military a chance to come together and speak out against an illegal, unjust and unwinnable occupation. IVAW currently has over 1,300 members in 49 states, Canada and on military bases in the United States and overseas. To learn more about IVAW you can visit our website at http://www.ivaw.org.
LikeLike
McCain linked to group in Iran-Contra affair
In the 1980s, McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzQtw1kATj1xCqPcAmwgCKDtNpDQD93LT9NG0
LikeLike
*Howard Zinn:* `Obama creates an opening for change but direct action
needed’
*Mike Davis:* Can Obama see the Grand Canyon?* *On presidential
blindness and economic catastrophe*
Todd Chretien: *Why I’m not voting for Barack
Obama
http://links.org.au/node/702
LikeLike
Uri Avnery
25.10.08
King of the Planet
THE PRESIDENT of the United States is the king of this planet. I live on this planet. Therefore, the election of the President concerns me, too. Very much so.
The President is not the sole ruler of the world. There are other rulers too, albeit less powerful ones. His decisions are subject to many constraints beyond his control. But there is no other person on earth whose decisions have such an impact on our lives.
The eight years of George W. Bush can serve as an example. The primitive character of the man, his low intellectual level, his past as a born-again zealot – all these have influenced the state of the world, from his failure in preventing 9/11, through his bloody adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the collapse of the world economy.
But still, every one of us, the citizens of the world who cannot vote in this election, has at least the right to say which of the candidates he or she would prefer in the White House.
I prefer Barack Obama.
ELECTIONS ARE not beauty contests. A wise voter must define the criteria according to which he intends to make his choice.
For me, the main attribute, overshadowing all others, is the ability to quickly recognize major changes when they occur and draw the necessary conclusions without delay.
In the words of the ancient Greek philosopher, “everything flows” – we know that the world does not stand still for a moment. In our time, with the rapid pace of modern life, the changes are quicker and more dramatic then they were 200 years ago. The development of technology, the spread of the internet, globalization, climate change, the instability of the economy, the currents of human migration, shifts in the world-wide balance of power – these and a thousand other factors ensure that changes will become more and more frequent and more and more radical.
The ability to adapt quickly to new situations is a decisive requirement for a leader. After dealing successfully with the world economic crisis, Franklin Delano Roosevelt reacted rapidly to Pearl Harbor. Winston Churchill recognized before others the danger inherent in Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany. The young and inexperienced John Kennedy dealt decisively with the Cuban missile crisis, which had brought the world to the brink of World War III. Mikhail Gorbachev oversaw the sudden collapse of the Soviet Bloc and avoided world-wide bloodshed. The next American President will be faced right away with an economic crisis that is changing the face of the world.
The President resembles the helmsman of a sailing-boat who has to be ready at every moment for a sudden change of the wind and even for a hurricane.
Which of the two – Barack Obama or John McCain – is better suited for that job? The elderly Republican, who sees himself as the successor of a long row of Admirals and whose spiritual world is stuck in the middle of the 20th century, or the (comparatively) young Democrat, a man of the 21st?
THE SECOND test, in my eyes, concerns the character of the candidates. A person can change his opinions, but hardly his character. A solid – but not exaggerated – self-confidence, self-discipline, cool-headedness in a crisis – these will have a large influence on his ability to carry out his duties.
We have seen the two in the great debates. One should not pay too much attention to what was said there – everything said in an election campaign is merely a tool to catch votes. But we saw how the two candidates function under extreme stress. Obama controlled himself admirably. His self-discipline did not falter for a moment. He did not respond to provocations and he kept his cool at all times. McCain was much less in control of himself.
The most important decision the two had to make in the course of the campaign was the choice of a running mate. Since the Vice-President can assume power at a moment’s notice – and there is indeed a significant probability that this may happen – the decision tells us much about the decision maker.
Obama’s decision was responsible and reasonable. He did not choose a brilliant or charismatic person, but someone who is versed in the affairs of state and could assume office without a problem.
McCain’s decision was a scandal that cries to high heaven. It suffices by itself to disqualify him from high office – not because of Sarah Palin’s opinions or her character, but because she is totally incapable of filling the role of President.
The choice testifies to a basic flaw in McCain’s character. He chose her because of the needs of the moment – to revive a flagging campaign and surprise the media, while appealing to the most primitive strata of American society. He jeopardized the future of the country for momentary expediency.
A person who is capable of making such a mistake should not be in a position to lead the most powerful country and to command the strongest military force on earth.
Moreover, the voter must ask himself or herself: if the President suffers a stroke, like Ariel Sharon, or is assassinated, like John F. Kennedy – would I prefer to see Biden or Palin in the Oval Office?
As for myself, I shrink back from the very idea of this primitive and venomous demagogue, Sarah Palin, becoming the “Leader of the Free World”.
A THIRD test is the ability to choose aides. This, too, is an important attribute.
A strong leader, confident of himself, chooses highly qualified assistants, people who are prepared to advance independent opinions and contradict the boss to his face. A leader lacking self-confidence surrounds himself with flatterers and yes-men, who tell him only what he wants to hear. John Kennedy surrounded himself with the best and the brightest. George W. belongs to the second category.
I judge Israeli leaders by this measure. Yigal Allon, a much admired general and politician, surrounded himself with bright young men, who did not hesitate to interrupt him in mid-speech and contradict him. Menachem Begin was surrounded by people who agreed with his every word.
A strong leader invites disagreement, debate, brainstorming. A leader who only acts strong does not brook any opposition. (Like the ultimate dictator, Adolf Hitler, who broke out in fits of rage if anyone dared to contradict him.)
Politics is a profession by itself. Most politicians have no profound knowledge of other matters, certainly not in the areas in which they have to make fateful decisions – from economics to military strategy. So the choice of the right advisors and the readiness to listen with an open mind, to learn and to think anew are essential qualities. I have the impression that Obama can do it. I am not so sure about McCain.
THERE IS another important consideration to take into account while making the choice: in a week and a half not only will a president be chosen, but also a very large group of senior officials in all areas of government.
In the American system, the new occupant of the White House brings with him thousands of other office-holders, whose equivalents in other countries belong to the permanent civil service. It is easy to imagine the huge difference between those Obama would bring with him and those who would come with McCain.
One should not forget the Supreme Court, which plays a central part in the American system (as it does now in Israel). It is the President who chooses new justices. The appointment of one or two can bring about far-reaching changes.
WHEN ONE speaks about the election of a President of the United States, it is also very important to consider the candidate’s openness to the wide world.
The United States is not just a country, it’s half a continent. Many of its citizens don’t give a damn about the world outside and don’t want to hear about it. School children are unable to place China or Brazil on the map. Like previous empires, the USA sees itself as an island of civilization in a sea of barbarians. (Just like Ehud Barak, with his Israel as a “villa in the middle of the jungle”.)
George Bush came to the White House with minimal knowledge about the world. John McCain does not know much more. True, he was born in the American military ghetto in Panama and languished for five years in a Vietnamese prison, but that does not make him a citizen of the world.
In this respect, Obama has an advantage unmatched by any previous president. He is the son of a black father who came from Kenya and a white American mother. In his childhood he attended a school in Indonesia. His manifold roots and experience give him much wider horizons. For a new arrival at the White House, that is an important treasure. There are things one cannot learn from others. Personal experience counts.
I MUST add a subjective remark. I belong to a generation that grew up admiring America. We saw the US as the freeest country in the world, an idealistic society, the bastion of democracy and human rights. In two world wars it rushed to the rescue of the opponents of tyranny.
When we had grown up, we found out that it ain’t necessarily so. We saw that the US is like most other states, and worse than some. During the last eight years, the US has presented itself to the world as an arrogant, bullying, primitive and aggressive country that rides roughshod over the human rights of its own and foreign citizens, justifies torture, keeps abominable concentration camps, and the list goes on.
The election of Barack Obama, a man who is half black and half white and whose convictions are liberal and democratic, can give us back some of our faith in the United States. It would show that, as has happened several times in the past, America can draw back from the brink in time and find itself again, as it did at the end of the Joe McCarthy era.
I do not entertain many illusions. I know that even in the best of circumstances, one single person cannot turn such a huge ship around and reverse its direction completely. But even small changes can be of immense importance to the world.
Perhaps, some day, I shall regret every word I have written here. Obama may prove to be a disappointment, and very much so. We cannot know the future. Today we can judge only on the basis of what we know today, according to our impressions and feelings today.
And these tell me: Obama.
permlink: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1224968257/
LikeLike
Posted by: “Zoltan Abraham” zsazle@yahoo.com zsazle
Mon Oct 27, 2008 2:20 am (PDT)
Video Roundup – Sunday, October 26:
In Which Michael Moore Talks About Clothes!
€ ¦
€ ¦
(For the online version of my daily video roundup, please visit my website at http://www.zoltanic.com.)€ ¦
€ ¦
€ ¦
An excellent ad. Obama hits back at McCain’s scare tactics:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1185304443?bctid=1878208604
€ ¦
€ ¦
Tom Brokaw is supposed to be in the tank for McCain. Turns out he is capable of doing some investigative reporting. He pushes back on McCain’s shifting positions on taxes:
€ ¦
€ ¦
In 1994, we were subjected to the Republican Revolution. In 2008, we might well witness the Republican Civil War. Read all about it:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/26/202828/51/700/643079
(Not a video.)
€ ¦
€ ¦
Michael Moore tells it like it is – socialism for the rich:
€ ¦
€ ¦
Moore on Slacker Uprising:
€ ¦
€ ¦
Moore calls for a new FDR:
€ ¦
€ ¦
Michael Moore on the economy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7TZqw5kBhk€ ¦
€ ¦
€ ¦
Michael Moore – Obama’s main opponent is ignorance:
€ ¦
€ ¦
Michael More on racism:
€ ¦
€ ¦
Michael Moore on the wardrobe of the Queen of the Senate:
€ ¦
€ ¦
Michael Moore doesn’t like Sarah Palin. Who would have thunk?
€ ¦
€ ¦
Rachel Maddow talks about Palin’s possible 2012 ambitions:
€ ¦
€ ¦
In case you are getting complacent about this election, in case you are not as fully motivated as you were just a short while ago, then watch this. I was wondering yesterday if Sarah Palin is losing some of her energy. No. She’s got it. She is back to her RNC speech type of venom. She very clearly relishes her own nastiness.
(Warning: Don’t watch on a full stomach.)
€ ¦
Remember, this person could become President. Let’s not let that happen!
€ ¦
€ ¦
A bit older, but worth a look. Olbermann on Palin’s cronyism:
€ ¦
€ ¦
Republican women on Sarah Palin. This is an older clip, but still relevant:
€ ¦
€ ¦
More from the White House Dress Up Doll:
€ ¦
€ ¦
More love from Russia:
€ ¦
€ ¦
This British guy wants us to leave Sarah Palin alone. And he has a meltdown. (Note: The language gets a little rough.)
€ ¦
€ ¦
Think of this as a six-minute Daisy Ad. Warning – some graphic content. (You need to watch it to the very end for the full impact.)
€ ¦
€ ¦
Sarah Palin look-alike stripper contest in Vegas:
€ ¦
Note: It used to be that guys wanted to vote for the President they could have a beer with. Now some guys seem to want to vote for the Vice President they would like to sleep with.
€ ¦
Come on, morans! Turn on the dormant organ you keep between those ears of yours!
€ ¦
€ ¦
A bit of levity. Sarah Palin, Queen of the Senate, is having a bad week:
€ ¦
€ ¦
McCain – Palin
Unstable – Unable
Unfit to lead!
LikeLike
$150,000 dollars of clothes isn’t enough for Sarah Palin
Posted by: “bigraccoon” bigraccoon@earthlink.net redwoodsaurus
Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:56 pm (PDT)
October 25th, 2008
$150,000 dollars of clothes isn’t enough for Sarah Palin
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2008/10/22/sarah-palin-just-like-you-spends-150000-on-clothes/
It was bad enough that the Republicans bought Sarah Palin one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of clothes to wear on the campaign trail, while telling everyone that she’s just a humble hockey mom who’s just like you and me. At the same time, Sarah Palin’s hair and makeup stylist was paid more by the campaign than a top McCain policy advisor.
http://irregulartimes.com/forum/topic/but-see-im-sure-the-stylist-gave-great-advice#post-62
What adds insult to injury is that Sarah Palin doesn’t think that $150,000 of new clothes are enough for her. This week, just as the story about her use of donors¹ money to buy clothes for herself was breaking, Sarah Palin sent an assistant out to buy yet another new suit for Palin to wear at a campaign rally.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10806191
$150,000 of new clothes, and Sarah Palin can’t find anything to wear? It looks like Sarah Palin has about as much understanding of the economic difficulties of ordinary people as Imelda Marcos did when she bought her shoes.
LikeLike
Posted by: “razldazl” razldazl@iinet.net.au
Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:30 pm (PDT)
The FundamentaList
*This week in the religious right:* How the current Republican attacks on Democrats are straight out of the religious right’s play book and why the Florida gay marriage ban is failing.
Sarah Posner | October 22, 2008 | web only
*1. Daughters of the Religious Right Revolution.*
Some elite Republicans are shocked, shocked, to discover the ugliness lurking in their party. Figures from Peggy Noonan to Colin Powell cannot believe it! The party of the shining city on the hill is turning vulgar!
The feigned surprise is laughable. After all, the only card left in the Republican deck is straight out of the religious right’s 30 year-old battle plan, which the GOP has warmly embraced since Reagan. Since the mid-1970s, the Republican Party has validated the religious right’s mythology of America’s Christian nationhood, cowed to its authoritarian litmus tests, and made demagoguery not only fashionable but heroic.
Michele Bachmann’s call for witch hunts and Sarah Palin’s accusations of socialism may be anachronistic, but if you are familiar with the ideological underpinnings of the religious right, you recognize them as carefully calibrated to appeal to loyalists who have been schooled in the evils of “statism” — the elevation of government over God. When Bachmann talks about Obama or other Democrats being “anti-American,” it’s a dog whistle to the base: It must be Satan trying to bring down America. When Palin calls Obama a socialist, she’s really calling him godless, and therefore a danger to God’s plan for America.
Elite Republicans’ sudden hostility to that kind of slime, however, shows just how much they have turned a blind eye to the animating principle of the religious right, which is not at its core opposition to abortion or gay rights, but support for instituting an authoritarian, supposedly “biblical” law. The Council for National Policy — the secretive brain trust of the conservative movement that meets quarterly to map out conservative movement (and GOP) strategy — was based on this very idea. Since its founding in 1981, the CNP vets Republican candidates each election cycle, and, although the group never much cared for McCain, it very much approved of Palin.
One of CNP’s founders, Conservative Caucus and Conservative Party founder Howard Phillips, is a protegé of R.J. Rushdoony, the architect of the Christian Reconstructionism that is the cornerstone of the religious right. Rushdoony summed up his view of “statism” when he said, “The historic Christian concept of government is the self-government of the Christian man under God and in terms of His law. This is set over against the top-heavy centralization of post-Enlightenment statism. The only cure for totalitarianism is the restoration of Christian government.”
Before the 2000 election, another CNP founder, Tim LaHaye — who in 2005 was named one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America by /Time/ — laid out the Palin-Bachmann mindset:
All thinking people in America realize an anti-Christian, anti-moral, and anti-American philosophy permeates this country and the world. . . . This alien philosophy does not come from the Bible, but is antithetical to it. In this country it flies under the banner of “liberalism,” but in reality it is atheistic socialism at best and Marxism at worst. If those who hold this philosophy were honest and admitted publicly they were hostile to God, His Son Jesus Christ, moral values and true freedom for all individuals, they would be voted out of office in three quarters of the congressional districts and states in our country. Instead, they use the title “liberal” to define themselves. . . . [and intend] to destroy the Biblical principles this country was founded on and replace them with freedom from responsibility.
Reap what you sow. Palin and Bachmann are the products of this kind of mindless demagoguery, and of the Republican Party’s love affair with the religious right.
*2. More Life and Death Threats.*
McCain might have rejected the endorsement of televangelist Rod Parsley, but you won’t hear him turning down the de facto endorsement Parsley made on his television show this week, as he quizzed McCain supporter Gary Bauer about what’s at stake in the election.
The election, said Parsley, echoing the apocalyptic themes prevalent as the religious right panics in the homestretch, “could mean the
difference between life and death.” He was talking about abortion, but Bauer expanded that theme into far more dire terrain. Listen for the echoes of LaHaye and Rushdoony in his words:
The whole idea of America is built on this idea that liberty comes from God. But it was also built on the idea that only a virtuous people could remain free . . . I’m really worried . . . that we’re throwing the idea of virtue out the window . . . But there are a whole lot of people like us who believe that America ought to be the place of ordered liberty under God. My fear is that if we don’t rediscover that idea, we’re going to be in deep trouble, that at some point God could take his hand of protection off of America, while we’re facing a very evil enemy abroad, while we’re dealing with tremendous problems here at home.
*3. More Islamofascism — and Child Sacrifice! — Coming to a Church or Synagogue Near You.*
The incendiary propaganda DVD /Obsession/, produced by the Clarion Fund, a non-profit organization founded by employees of the Orthodox Jewish group Aish HaTorah, made news last month when Clarion paid to have millions of copies of the DVD inserted in Sunday newspapers in swing states around the country. Now, the DVD is being sent to 325,000 clergy through a new publication called The Judeo-Christian View .
The Judeo-Christian View, in addition to advising clergy to preach on the “dangers” of “Islamofascism,” offers a free model sermon for them to use to preach against gay marriage and “child sacrifice” (late-term abortion). The video contrasts the two presidential candidates’ positions on both those issues, and obviously favors McCain.
The Judeo-Christian View is run by O’Neal Dozier, a Florida pastor who claimed in 2006 that God revealed to him that Charlie Crist would become that state’s governor. Later that year, Jeb Bush, then Florida’s governor, removed Dozier from a Judicial Nominating Commission to which he had appointed him in 2001, and Crist tossed him from serving on his campaign’s “Strengthening Florida’s Families” advisory group after Dozier called Islam a “cult.” When Dozier served on the judicial commission, he and other members asked prospective nominees if they were God-fearing, their views on the 2003 Supreme Court decision striking down Texas’ anti-sodomy law, and how they would feel about posting the Ten Commandments in their courtroom.
“Our nation faces a fork, a divergence between the high road and the low road,” reads The Judeo-Christian View letter to clergy, “and you and your congregation could very well determine the direction we take. The high road upholds America’s peaceful tradition of Judeo-Christian tolerance and morality. The low road marches us toward militant secular-paganism, militant Islam, or both.”
*4. More Scare Tactics in California Gay Marriage Fight; Is the Florida Ban Fizzling?*
While advocates for Proposition 8, California’s proposed gay marriage ban, are rolling in cash, they’re stepping up their overheated and absurd claims about what defeat of the ban would mean. The gays and the teachers’ unions, Prop 8’s advocates are shouting, want gay marriage taught in elementary schools . Proponents of the ban are also heavily targeting Latino and African-American voters and the most recent Survey USA poll shows support for the ban running slightly ahead of opposition, 48-45 percent.
In Florida, opponents of gay marriage are having a little more difficulty gaining traction. A recent poll by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel showed the ban falling seven points short of the 60 percent needed to amend the state’s constitution. And a recent rally hosted by Bishop Harry Jackson, which organizers expected to draw thousands, attracted only 700 people.
John Stemberger, the Florida anti-gay activist heading up the campaign for the gay marriage ban, told the /Orlando Sentinel/ that attendance was down because Obama held a
rally in the city the same night.
You’d think that would tell him something, wouldn’t you?
*5. For Televangelists, Financial Crisis Is Evidence of One World Order.*
Internet televangelist Bill Keller — notorious for his excoriation of Mitt Romney for belonging to the satanic religion of Mormonism — now claims that “God is using the economy to judge this nation for its sins … and now America is being insidiously led down the path to a twisted version of Socialism.”
And in just a few weeks, we’ll be treated to a book on a similar theme from John Hagee. His publisher, Strang Book Group, promises only the best in conspiracy-laden prophecy. “Drawing from detailed inside information from sources around the world and combined with his knowledge of Bible prophecy and End Times theology, Hagee gives readers a provocative view of the events taking place today, many of which were spelled out in stunning detail by prophetic writings penned more than two thousand years ago.”
Wow. I didn’t know default credit swaps were in the Bible.
Contact me at tapthefundamentalist@gmail.com
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fundamentalist_102208
LikeLike
Posted by: “Carl Davidson” carld717@yahoo.com carld717
Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:34 pm (PDT)
Subject: Battleground: Fayetteville – Tires Slashed at Obama Rally, Black Voters Face Gantlet of Hecklers
Tires slashed during Obama rally
By Corey G. Johnson
Staff writer
Fayetteville Observer
Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.
Sheriff’s deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.
Many of the damaged vehicles were parked on Wilkes Road. Representatives from Obama and Sen. John McCain’s campaigns said they were unaware of the acts.
Susan Lagana, the North Carolina communications director for Obama, said it was extremely disappointing and unfortunate that “people would have to experience something like that.”
Mario Diaz, communications director for McCain, did not respond to a call late Sunday.
Sarah Revis, who lives on Wilkes Road, said the slashed tires left several women, including a single mother and a toddler, stranded and upset. At least four tow trucks were sent to move the vehicles from the Crown, Revis said.
“This is an embarrassment to this city and to me as a citizen,” Revis said. “I’ve seen women out here crying and men cussing. This is a crying shame.”
Lynne Steenstra said she thought that the slashings were scare tactics designed to keep her and others from supporting Obama.
Even though it cost her roughly $120 to get her Dodge Caravan towed and fixed, Steenstra said the act would not intimidate her from voting.
“It hasn’t deterred us one bit,” Steenstra said. “It has only encouraged us more. I just hope whoever did this pays the price.”
Staff writer Corey G. Johnson can be reached at johnsonc@fayobserver.com or 323-4848, ext. 487.
————————
McCain supporters heckle early voters
POSTED October 20 2008 8:11 AM BY
By Christina Bellantoni
Washington Times
*
PRINCETON, W.Va. — Over the last few days I’ve been through Southwest Virginia, down in North Carolina and now back up into the mountains on the West Virginia side near Bluefield for some stories about the political climate in red states.
Sen. Barack Obama has set up a massive organization across the country, and especially in North Carolina.
The campaign has given supporters lists with hours and locations of early voting sites, and collected the names, e-mail address and cell phone number of each attendee at the Fayetteville rally Sunday afternoon. (There were a few thousand who had to listen to his speech from the parking lot after the coliseum hit about 10,000 capacity.)
An organizer at the rally rattled off the addresses of early vote sites nearby that would be open after the event.
Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.
Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.
As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama’s acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word “terrorist.” They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.
The first video closes with Roger Farina (who won NHL fan of the year in 2003) going into detail about why he was heckling the voters.
I sent Stephen Dinan a quote from Farina about former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s endorsement of Obama yesterday. Read his story wrapping up that news and Sen. John McCain’s reaction here.
At the voting site, I asked a local sheriff monitoring the scene if the protesters were allowed. “They’re fine,” he said. I asked if he’d ever seen anything like that and he said he’d never seen Sunday voting.
Most voters in line ignored the hecklers but a few heckled back. One black woman told me she was deeply saddened to see people protesting the most fundamental right of democracy.
I also spoke to a McCain supporter who was voting early even though he also had been protesting across the street.
One group was handing out fliers “comparing” McCain and Obama on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Among those listed on the sheet were:
–Opposes gay pride? McCain YES Obama NO
–Supports human cloning? McCain NO Obama YES
The flier is a lie, Obama does not support cloning. Also, I know the McCain camp would dispute him “opposing gay pride.”
I have a story in today’s paper taking a look at Obama’s TV ad strategy, aided in part by his record fundraising haul.
———–
ROANOKE, Va.
In the span of one hour, voters here are told – twice – that good Virginia jobs have vanished because “Washington sold them out with the help of people like John McCain.”
Sen. Barack Obama’s fundraising juggernaut has steamrolled his Republican rival, burying voters with ads – many of them negative – that he can afford to broadcast into the living rooms of red-state voters. There’s no chance it will let up, as the campaign announced Sunday that Mr. Obama had raised more than $150 million in September alone.
The Obama ad attacking Mr. McCain as responsible for trade deals that led to job losses was one of nine 30-second spots that voters could see Friday during the 6 p.m. news.
Mr. Obama’s ads that night painted him as someone who will fight for the American dream, who has a centrist health care plan and who will uphold gun rights. They portrayed Mr. McCain as an ally of President Bush whose health care plan would harm families.
The positive health care spot was Mr. Obama’s largest buy – it ran more than 20,000 times across the country from mid-September through mid-October, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group.
In this Southwest Virginia region, just two of every 10 ads played Friday were positive. Two Obama attacks on Mr. McCain came in quick succession during the broadcast of “The Late Show” with David Letterman, followed by a Republican National Committee spot depicting Mr. Obama as inexperienced.
All the Republican ads shown Friday were negative, and an independent pro-Democratic veterans group ran a whopping six spots slamming Mr. McCain for his voting record.
The spending overload hurt Obama during the primary season, with many voters saying they were seeing too much of the Illinois senator. But he has the cash to play offense on a wide electoral map – adding Kentucky and West Virginia to his TV advertising schedule recently – and quickly defend any attacks that may come his way in the final days of the campaign.
— Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter,
The Washington Times
—
Keep On Keepin’ On
Stop McCain, Stop the War, Vote Obama 2008!
Carl Davidson
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Back to top
Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (1)
7.
I’m new here
Posted by: “Roger” roger@morgan5010.freeserve.co.uk catharguy
Thu Oct 23, 2008 6:37 pm (PDT)
I’m just an ignorant Brit I suppose, but american politics interests me. I find Barack Obama more interesting then John Mccain, but why I suppose, perhaps he is nearer my own age group, and the McCain camp seem overly obsessed with spin and trying to catch the female professional vote through Sarah Palin, why did John Mccain choose such an inexperienced politician as his running mate? When the pitbull could have one finger away from the nuclear button!
I have pushed the credentials of Obama on another yahoo group, not really knowing the man or his policies, but to be met by vitriol and disdain, perhaps Obama is too left wing, and too much for the poor in America?? what are the views of others on here??
Roger Morgan
LikeLike
Palin Charges Alaska for Kids Travel
Posted by: “bigraccoon” bigraccoon@earthlink.net redwoodsaurus
Wed Oct 22, 2008 9:00 am (PDT)
Palin Charged Alaska for Kids’ Travel
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO
AP
http://news.aol.com/elections/article/palin-charged-alaska-for-kids-travel/220444?icid=200100397x1212041148x1200736029
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Oct. 21) – Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.
In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.
Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor’s children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business. As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters ‹ Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; nd Piper, 7 ‹ by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor’s schedule.
But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend. Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children. “She said any event she can take her kids to is an event she tries to attend,” said Jennifer McCarthy, who helped organize the June 2007 Family Day Celebration picnic in Ketchikan that Piper attended with her parents.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Back to top
Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (1)
2.
R.I.P. Reagan Revolution
Posted by: “razldazl” razldazl@iinet.net.au
Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:37 pm (PDT)
From Forbes magazine
Dangerous Thoughts
*R.I.P. Reagan Revolution*
Dan Gerstein 10.22.08, 12:01 AM ET
As a student of politics, I have been watching this campaign with one eye on the historic prospects of Barack Obama and one eye on the tenuous future of his Republican opponents.
I have been particularly fascinated by how the Republicans plan to begin rehabilitating the brand that President Bush and his allies have shredded over the last eight years, reconnect with their sunny Reagan roots and prepare themselves to compete again for the determinative center of the electorate.
Judging from the disturbing developments of the last two months, the verdict seems clear. Forget the self-reckoning and self-repairing–the Republicans seem intent on self-immolation. Indeed, instead of trying to work itself out of the deep electoral hole that Bush and company created, the GOP has apparently opted to apply the drill-baby-drill mantra to its own political fortunes–and, improbably, find ways to narrow the party’s appeal to the swing voters they have done so much to alienate during the Bush era.
I’m not talking about what the hateful yahoos who are attending rallies for the Republican ticket are yelling (albeit after being egged on by a flurry of indefensible attacks by the McCain campaign and its surrogates). I’m talking about what Republican leaders and elected officials are actually saying and doing. All of which, taken together, suggests that the GOP of the moment is now far closer to being the party of Joe McCarthy than John McCain, and explains why Colin Powell and many other responsible Republicans are sending increasingly urgent distress signals over the sinking McCain ship.
We have seen the party that gave us Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan nominate a woman for vice president who could not answer an interviewer’s relatively gentle question about what news sources she regularly reads. This is not a matter of class or gender, but rather seriousness and credibility, which Sarah Palin lost with many voters who were willing to give her a fair shake the minute she claimed that seeing Russia from her state was a foreign policy credential.
We have seen Palin go on to falsely accuse her Democratic opponent of “palling around with terrorists.” The most outrageous thing about this assertion is not the gross exaggeration of Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, but the shameful, purposeful use of the plural: “terrorists.” These are the kinds of loony accusations we are used to hearing from members of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, not running mates of John McCain.
We have seen one of McCain’s campaign co-chairman, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, use the racially loaded term “guy of the street ” to try to paint Obama as extreme to white America. This about a black man who grew up in the suburbs of Hawaii, graduated from Columbia University, was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, taught constitutional law for 12 years and was attacked as an elitist by Republicans for talking about the price of arugula in Iowa? He is about as “street” as the late William F. Buckley, Jr.
Just last Friday, we saw a Republican congresswoman from Ohio, Michelle Bachmann, explicitly attack Obama and his wife as “anti-American” and call on the media to investigate members of Congress to “find out if they are pro-America or anti-America. ” Then Palin repeated this patriotism-questioning line at a rally in North Carolina, saying she was glad to be in a part of the country that was “pro-America.” One has to wonder what made these women think that this was acceptable in the United States of 2008?
And most recently, as if the overt hints of McCarthyism were not enough, McCain and his allies are now openly calling Obama a socialist because he wants to raise the top tax brackets back to their Clinton-era levels (when the country enjoyed the greatest peacetime expansion in our history) and provide a cut in the payroll tax to middle class workers.
These digs about a Democrat who has raised more money from Wall Street than his Republican opponent and been endorsed by notable red diaper babies like Warren Buffett, former Federal Reserve Chairman and Reagan appointee Paul Volcker, Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl and Google CEO Erik Schmidt? These attacks from a Republican Party whose president just called for nationalizing much of our banking system and whose nominee endorsed that same extreme government intervention in the marketplace?
Some will want to write off all these bizarre deep-end diatribes–to borrow a favorite Cheney-ism–as the last desperate throes of a dying campaign. Something is near death all right, but it’s not merely the McCain insurgency. It’s the Reagan Revolution.
Those blue-collar Democrats that Reagan stole away with his potent mix of unshakable optimism, John Wayne strength and cultural grievance are now coming home–some of them, albeit, grudgingly. They have been pushed back as much as won back by the incompetence, intolerance and crony capitalism of the Bush reign, which McCain is doing more to repeat than repudiate. As these Reagan Democrats and centrist independents flee, and as the country cries out for the bigness and confidence of the best of Reaganism at this time of economic crisis, all the Republicans seem to offer is the smallness and suspicion of Reagan’s low-road assault on welfare queens.
How bad has the backlash gotten? According to the /New York Times//CBS News poll that came out on Tuesday, while Obama now has the highest favorability of any non-incumbent candidate since Reagan in 1980, Palin’s negative rating is the highest for a vice-presidential candidate in the history of that poll. What’s worse, McCain’s disapproval ratings have risen 10 points since September.
But the best measure of the Reagan Revolution’s kaput-ness, and of the damage being done by the latest events in this politics of paranoia, is how many prominent Republicans have been willing to openly violate the Gipper’s 11th Commandment–and criticize other Republicans.
Some of the more biting critics of Palin’s selection have been conservative-thought leaders like George Will, David Brooks, Ken Adelman, David Frum, Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker, who said in her column on the /National Review/ Web site that the Alaskan governor “makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero .”
More recently, Republican senators Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Susan Collins of Maine, who are locked in tough re-election fights, strongly voiced their discomfort with the conspiratorial robo-calls
the McCain campaign has been using to mass-produce its bogus Ayers attacks on Obama.
The most damning indictment, though, came from Colin Powell’s appearance Sunday on /Meet the Press/, which was as much a rejection of the Republican Party’s current direction as an endorsement of Obama. The import of Powell’s candid comments –embracing the inclusiveness of Obama’s campaign, criticizing the narrowness and offensiveness of the McCain campaign and its tactics, condemning the conservative whisper campaign alleging Obama is a Muslim–was that he believes his party became something alien to him as it went about deforming Obama into something alien to America.
If this complaint sounds familiar, that’s because it fatefully mirrors the wagon-circling, vote-hemorrhaging meltdown the Democrats experienced at the height of the Reagan Revolution in the mid-1980s. Now the cement shoe is on the other foot. More and more in this campaign, the Republicans are the ones who look hopelessly out of touch with the mood of the country (along with the demographic and economic changes it is undergoing), totally bankrupt of new ideas that respond to the challenges of the moment and reflexively driven by their side’s most extreme purity-demanding partisans.
The upshot of all this is that the Republicans have a lot more to fear now than Barack Obama or losing this one election. Most immediately, the Republican Party has to be afraid that swing voters and the moderate voices within its own ranks are growing afraid of the Republican Party. Longer term, they have to be even more worried that they are turning off a whole generation of young voters by clinging to the outdated remnants of Nixon’s Southern strategy. Indeed, the millennials are not just flocking to Obama–they are registering as Democrats by overwhelming margins. And by all indications, tired tropes about taxes and terrorists are just not going to put them back in play.
What will? That is the central question the Republicans will have to confront once this campaign is over and the denial on the right–as evidenced by the widespread shoot-the-messenger reaction to Powell’s break from the party–subsides.
Will they reassess their relationships with narrow-minded interest groups and rebuild their intellectual capital in these out years, as the Democrats did after 1984 with the creation of the centrist, free-thinking Democratic Leadership Council that midwifed Bill Clinton’s middle class agenda? Or will they follow Sarah Palin’s lead and limit their pitch to the ever-smaller slices of “pro-America” America that embrace their anachronistic politics?
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Back to top
Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (1)
3.
When a Press Conference is not a Press Conference; another FEMA Foll
Posted by: “frankofbos” FrankOfBos@yahoo.com frankofbos
Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:12 pm (PDT)
When a Press Conference is not a Press Conference; another FEMA Folly –
Bush History,10/23
We have yet another incident on this date of the Bush administration
attempting to misuse the media to deceive the public, as FEMA fakes a
news conference, with fake reporters posing soft-ball questions. Also,
polls show little support amongst Iraqis for US forces, while the
Pentagon wastes more of your money, and guess who uses ‘the google’?
http://poorgeorgesalmanac.com/?p=721
Poor George’s Almanac: 365 Reasons to Fight Against McBush’s 3rd Term!
Today’s category: Bushisms, Dishonesty, FEMA Follies, Iraq
Back to top
Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (1)
4.
Video Roundup 10-22: Sarah in the Sky With Diamonds!
Posted by: “Zoltan Abraham” zsazle@yahoo.com zsazle
Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:12 am (PDT)
Video Roundup – Wednesday, October 22:
Sarah in the Sky With Diamonds!
(For the online version of my daily video roundup, please visit my website at http://www.zoltanic.com.)
Obama speaks in Virginia:
Joe Biden tells Washington to get active:
You can sign up to volunteer in WA here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/WAGOTVShifts/
Darcy Burner (WA-08) at NetRoots Nation in 2008:
This is a really important Washington race. Darcy has pulled ahead in the latest polls.
Here is her website:
http://www.darcyburner.com/
There was once a John McCain who decried negative campaigns and malicious personal attacks. That John McCain, regrettably, is M.I.A. now-a-days. Here is the new John McCain, the one too desperate to win to uphold his former principles:
McCain’s latest gaffe… (Note: What comes out of his mouth is not exactly family fare.)
Yesterday, I said to John McCain: Make up your mind, John! Today, I say to John McCain: Make up your freakin’ bloody mind already, John:
Jon Stewart agrees with me (I’m flattered!):
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=189119
More on the gaffe I covered yesterday:
CNN shills for McCain, as they usually do, since they are owned by the GOP. But listen to all the stuff McCain says about Pennsylvania. It rivals Palin’s pro-American parts of America comment.
Daily Kos highlights that Sarah Palin, speaking alongside John McCain, can’t explain what a diplomatic precondition is:
Here is the full interview. McCain looks exhausted. But he still has Joe Lieberman’s support!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27328627#27328627
I love the empty auditorium for the background. Hey, John and Sarah, news flash – no one is listening…
…Except for Rudy! If Mr. 9-11 Himself is on your side, who can be against you?? Watch this wickedly clever take on a new Rudy robocall, brought to you by Jed from Daily Kos:
Read more on this here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/22/154036/37/776/638927
Chuck Todd doesn’t feel the chemistry:
To be honest, John McCain has chemistry with a only three people: Joe Lieberman, Karl Rove, and George W. Bush.
But then again:
And again:
Did I say that McCain looked tired? It wouldn’t be the first time:
This is really scary. The electronic machines are at it again:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27328627#27321701
The report talks about only one voter and tries to downplay the problem. But I have seen a number of reports of this nature. The problem does not appear to be isolated.
Stalin infamously said (supposedly): ‘It’s not the people who vote that count; it’s the people who count the votes’
Don’t let your vote be stolen!
Josh Marshall’s report for October 22. He says that Pandora Palin is dragging McCain down. Who would have thunk…
I like Josh, but he needs to get a little more sleep. He referred to Palin as “Sen. Palin” today:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/239132.php
I used to really not like Chris Matthews. But he gives Nancy P(whatever her name is) a good lesson is civics in this discussion:
Do you get the sense that Nancy Pfotenhauer just about breaks down crying by the end of the interview, before she turns the big smile back on? (I know I would go and have a long cry if I got this kind of clobbering on national TV… But perhaps I am a little thin skinned.)
Of course, in July, Palin didn’t know anything about what the VP does:
She’s been learning a lot since those heady days of the Summer of 2008. But apparently, her teachers suck.
The moose that keeps on giving, just keeps on giving. Caribou Barbie has been charging Alaska for her kids’ travel expenses. She has charged the state a per diem for living at home. Now it seems that she is not really running for VP after all. She wants to be the official White House Dress Up Doll.
Read here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/22/15448/341/829/638882
And watch as the talking heads of Morning Joe realize, with much sorrow, that they don’t know how to spin this positively for our favorite wolf-killer:
Read about the guy whose car cost less than Palin’s handbag:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/22/233517/14/348/639363
The Huffington Post has a slideshow of some Palin clothes:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/21/rnc-has-spent-over-150000_n_136736.html
And don’t forget that Cindy McCain wore a $300,000 outfit (including jewelry) to the Republican National Convention (the price of a house in many markets).
Oh, but the blond warriors of the Emperor Worship Channel (a.k.a. Fox “News”) set out to rival world famous contortionists as they try to spin this for Sarah the Victim of the Evil World:
One point they make is that we never pay attention to this kind of stuff when it comes to guys. Yeah. Which is why nobody noticed it when John Edwards got a $400 haircut…
But the issue here is not merely how much money the RNC is spending on Palin’s wardrobe (though that in and of itself is obscene). The issue is also the sheer hypocrisy of the McCain camp in trying to sell Palin as your average, PTA-going, Wal-Mart-shopping, struggling-to-meet-bills kind of hockey mom, while dressing her in clothes worth far more than most Americans make in a year.
So move over hockey moms, because here comes Sarah the Unblinking, Queen of the Senate. She has a diamond puck, and she’s not afraid to use it!
Oh, and do you remember when the McCain camp tried to paint Obama as the elitist? Let’s take a stroll down memory lane:
Remember Paris Hilton’s response?
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d
In reality, Michelle and Barack lead modest lives. Watch the Obamas discuss how they dress on a budget:
Let’s end with Steven Colbert tonight:
On ACORN:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/188889/october-21-2008/the-word—fantasyland
On the Battle of the Gods:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/188890/october-21-2008/battle-of-the-gods
McCain – Palin
Unstable – Unable
Unfit to lead!
LikeLike
Liberals are just nutty and Godless to boot!
LikeLike
Hi Bill Kingston, that is why the Republican party won the elections so overwhelmingly … oops, they LOST overwhelmingly! And thanks for explaining your point of view so thoroughly 🙂
LikeLike