Here's hoping today's results drive the Republican Party, the foulest, most vile creation of the American political system, back underneath the rock from whence it came, and that it takes its legions of bigots, scabs, and Christofacists with it.
....."Fact: ACORN has implemented the most sophisticated quality-control system in the voter engagement field, but in almost every state we are required to turn in ALL completed applications, even the ones we know to be problematic.
Fact: ACORN flags incomplete, problem, or suspicious cards when we turn them in, but these warnings are often ignored by election officials. Often these same officials then come back weeks or months later and accuse us of deliberately turning in phony cards.
Fact: Our canvassers are paid by the hour, not by the card, so there is NO incentive for them to falsify cards. ACORN has a zero-tolerance policy for deliberately falsifying registrations, and in the relatively rare cases where our internal quality controls have identified this happening we have fired the workers involved and turned them in to election officials and law-enforcement.
Fact: No charges have ever been brought against ACORN itself. Convictions against individual former ACORN workers have been accomplished with our full cooperation, using the evidence obtained through our quality control and verification processes.".......
Christopher Buckley, son of conservative movement icon William F. Buckley, is officially in the Obama camp.
"Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.".......
....."I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”.........
......"As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.”.......
Christopher Buckley
Aping urbanity Oozing with vanity Plump as a manatee Faking humanity Journalistic calamity Intellectual inanity Fox Noise insanity You’re a profanity Hannity
"I’m afraid I cannot join in. In fact I cannot say anything about this candidacy that takes it in any way seriously. It is a farce. It is absurd. It is an insult to all intelligent people. It is a sign of a candidate who has lost his mind. There is no way to take the nomination of Palin to be vice-president of the world’s sole superpower - except to treat it as a massive, unforgivable, inexplicable decision by someone who has either gone insane or is managerially unfit to be president of the United States. When, at some point, the hysteria dies down, even her supporters will realise that, by this decision, McCain has rendered himself unfit to run a branch of Starbucks, let alone the White House."
Posted at: 09:09 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
More specifically, why do poor and working class people who have been consistently kicked in the face by GOP fiscal and economic policy continue to vote for Republicans. This is a very interesting article that offers a very good explanation. Apparently, "reason is the slave of the passions, and can pretend to no other office than to serve and obey them." Thomas Frank explored the same phenomenon in "What's the Matter With Kansas" from a religious angle. - from diary post at MyDD
"For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?" - full article at The Atlantic
Posted at: 01:32 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
A Glimpse of the Future, No Matter Who's President
September 10, 2008
"An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.
The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force." - Washington Post
"So here’s the reason why the whole “Bridge to Nowhere” flap is a big deal; it’s an outright lie. LIE. Not a big word, so say it with me; the Bridge to Nowhere narrative pushed by the McPalin campaign is one gigantic LIE.
It’s a lie because part of McCain’s narrative is that he hates pork barrel spending. In order to embue his new running mate with anti-pork street creds, they hammer her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere over and over again. Indeed, Justin Gardner has a new McCain ad where they hit it again.
He’s bewildered and so am I. Why would one continue to sell this lie when it is so readily debunked if for no other reason than an utter contempt for the voter; a disbelief that they will go through even the most cursory of fact checking.
Because, you see, McCain has said multiple times, including on Thursday night, that he will be ruthless in going after pork barrel spending; going so far as to say he will “make them famous.”
Apparently his way of making them famous is by selecting them as running mate."
Rachel Maddow calls out the lies about Obama told by Sarah Palin and John McCain, her running mate, at the GOP convention. Of course, complete ignorance is a legitimate defense against a charge of lying, so I'm hoping it will be used.
There is one factually innacurate statement in the post on Crooks and Liars linked above. Thad Cochran is from Mississippi, not Missouri. The rest is very well documented.
If The Crazy Lady Is Qualified To Be President,........
September 6, 2008
Why Isn't She Qualified To Talk To Reporters?
Which task is harder? Per the Washington Monthly, McCain's Strategy is to hide her in the closet between fundraisers until election day. She should prove good at getting religious lunatics to cough up their money.
"The Republican message about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone — so we can use them as we see fit.
If you doubt this scenario, consider this: On Wednesday morning, a teenage boy from Alaska stood in a receiving line on an airport tarmac, being glad-handed by the potential next president of the United States — because he got his girlfriend pregnant. TV cameras were lined up in advance. The mind boggles." - Ted Anthony, Associated Press
It is clear to me, so clear, that the GOP as it is currently constituted may talk the talk when it comes to faith and democracy, but they will never walk the walk. They can't stand the idea of faithful people working to make a difference in their world, of citizens bettering their communities, because it is too threatening to the corrupt and authoritarian system they have built. - Pastor Dan, Street Prophets
In her defense, the speech was written two weeks ago, before McCain was desperate enough to choose her. That makes the blatant lies she told in her speech boilerplate Republican lies. But unless she's dumber than a sack of hammers, to repeat them makes her just as much of a liar. I suppose it's not the worst thing the Republican party has ever done. After all, this is the party that has been demonizing black teenagers who get pregnant for three decades now, and they proudly display the "hockey dad" who scored on her daughter as if he's Wally Cleaver. Give me a break!
Joe Lieberman holds a senate seat today because Barack Obama went to Connecticut in 2006 to campaign for him againsta real Democrat. Lieberman didn't seem to notice any of Obama's apparent defects then. Stephen Colbert shows up Lieberman for the jackass and hypocrite he is.
For Me, This Is The Most Unbelievable Story of The Whole Campaign
September 1, 2008
Just a thought from me, but mightn't Sarah Palin's daughter have benefitted from a little information about birth control rather than just the assurance from her mother that she would be forced to bear her child if it were fathered by a rapist. What incredible hypocrisy. Maybe the hockey Mom should have spent a bit more time with her daughter.
Talking Points Memo and Open Left are reporting this announcement from the McCain camp. If John McCain wins this election, America is just beyond hope.
