They should do this for every ad (at least the blatantly misleading ones).  Basically they play McCain's current ads and refute them point by point - CLICK ME

Energy Fictions (sub)

Here is the underlying reality: A nation that uses one-quarter of the world’s oil while possessing less than 3 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way to happiness at the pump, much less self-sufficiency. The only plausible strategy is to cut consumption while embarking on a serious program of alternative fuels and energy sources. This is a point the honest candidate should be making at every turn.

What the NY Times fails to mention is that the they and the rest of the MSM have always been quick to skewer any candidate honest enough to make such a point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/us/politics/10mccain.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

This is encouraging for any future world leader:

"Senator John McCain is so quick to pick up his gold-colored cellphone to solicit advice — from senators, campaign consultants, even the stray former deputy press secretary — that aides, concerned about his tendency to adopt the last opinion he has heard, have tried to cut back on the time he has to make calls."

A couple of weeks back when Steve Schmidt took over the McCain camp, we heard Ohhh Karl Rove Protege, he is going to smack down Obama, it's all over, now where  talking. Yet, almost a month has passed and it seems as if nothing changed. For the most basic denominator, Obama led by 5 pts then, and he leads by an avg of 5 pts now. BUT, again that is the lowest common denominator.

Let's look at other facts.

1. Ground game. Nate Silver of 538, has so far Obama's camp with roughly 300 campaing offices compared to McCain's roughly 100.

2. Fundraising. McCain camp is still making raising 1/3 of what Obama is raising and they have to submit to asking 25 bucks for 10 dollar tire gauge.

3. Enthusiasm. Yet, the Obama campaign is blowing McCain out by a 3:1 margin in enthusiam gap. Although this does not translate proportionally into more votes, it does mean that the most enthusiastic are far more likely to vote than those who are not. McCain has been his party's nominee for about 6 months, Obama 2 months ( the numbers should be reserved).

4. Reaching beyond the 'base". It is not possible to watch an Obama rally without someone stating they were a former republican and are now voting for Obama. The only dems voting for McCain are the Hillary Dead Enders, I am willing to reach out on a limb and say the number of voters Obama is registering and the number of Republicans voting for Obama are more than those Dead-Enders. Also, making life harder for McCain is the nagging issue of Evangelicals. Sure, Obama may not win them because of abortion, gay rights, stem cell research and so forth- but he can get them to say "I won't vote for Obama, but that doesn't mean I will vote for McCain." If Obama can talk the lingo enough for them while NOT voting for him,  don't hate him- score one for the Obama camp. The McCain camp acutally tried to win these evangelicals over by sending a statement to all the conservative evangelical leaders stating that McCain's faith is a personal issue and gave them excerpts from his books about faith. As you can imagine, that did not fly well over with these folks. McCain does not seem like the type to fake it, Bush yes, McCain no. You don't say these types of people are agents of intolerance one year and believably suck up to them the next.

5. Character Assasination. The McCain camp gets kudos for trying, but NO CIGAR. The good thing about the long primary is that Obama's story has been told to death,warmed over and told back again, and then re-heated in the microwave. Everyone knows his father left him, his mom had food stamps,blah blah blah. Everyone knows he had a crazy pastor, and might have passed by this crazy kook who hated American a million years ago by the name of Ayers. Everyone knows his wife (according to Hannity) didn't love or have pride in America- blah blah. So now that all that is out in the open, it won't have nearly as much potency had it come out in the General Election. InsHannity and Limpbaugh can cry and whine all day, but lets be honest Americans don't like leftovers if it ain't fresh-it ain't American. John McCain may have been in public life for 4 centuries, yet I don't think everyone knows about a certain Keating 5 scandal- I am sure we will be reminded of it.

Part 2 of Character Assasination. The good will that McCain had with the press is kinda of- how do you say this- OVER. This past week, he gave the national press corp roughly 38 minutes. I don't think the sprinkle doughnut givers at the A.P would appreciate that . Obama was never a press darling, so they knew what they were and are getting. McCain left the press in the middle of the night, and left 2 dollars on the kitchen table. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.

And by the way, could someone explain the McCain ideology of framing Obama to him. It is like everything the McCain camp potrays him as an antithesis to what the McCain camp potrays him as. Is this another the McCain campaign does not speak for the McCain campaign.

Case 1: McCain Campaign:  vs McCain Campaign

Obama is an elitist vs. Obama is a celebrity

Elitist: Someone who thinks of themselves as better than others, especially intelctually.

Celebrity: Someone who is famous more so for their looks than intelect, not all celebrities but Paris Hilton and Britney Spears fall squarely in this camp


Case 2: McCain campaign vs McCain campaign

Obama is inexperienced vs. Obama is experienced

Inexperienced: Obama is soooo inexperienced he does not understand Iraq, Afghanistan, the Afgan Iraq border, Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Applesauce, Golf Carts, Tire guages, hair products, bells, whistles, why the sky is blue, birds, bees, ....

Experienced: Obama is SOLELY responsible for the price of gas, Nevermind that he's been in congress for 4 yrs and I have for 26- but by himself this jackass goes around the country prancing around while he can by his mighy stick make the price of gas go down. In this, don't they contradict what they say that people say Obama is "The One" while they are saying Obama is "The One"

Although, I hated Romney, I think he would have been much much much more able to stick to one coherent message rather than this paintball splash of nonsense the McCain camp sends.

A new article over at FiveThirtyEight.com (informative as always) looks to analyze the number of field offices both Obama and McCain have set up in each state. Some of the results are surprising (such as McCain apparently not making much of a play for PA... I thought PA was hugely contentious this election?). But the point is this: nationwide, Obama is leading McCain in field offices by a more than 3-1 margin.

As I'd early spoken about in an earlier post, I had confidence that Obama's ground game was going to not only make up ground he'd lost from McCain's strategy of ad-blitzing, but also propel him ahead of McCain in the long run.

My predictions on that end have yet to be proven. But the correlation between the poll numbers per state and Obama's ground operations are really quite remarkable.

For example: Obama is making a heavy play for Montana, and the polling shows he's making inroads. If we compare that to the number of field offices he has open and operating, then things start to make a little more sense how Obama would be doing that well in such a deep-red state.

Of course, correlation does not imply causation. But as of yet, I have little to no evidence that anything else could be a factor.

I guess, though, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. But for now, these numbers look very, very promising.

I see that the news orgs are keeping on top of this, <A HREF = "Newsweek'>http://www.newsweek.com/id/151784">Newsweek has a lead: ANTHRAX The Case Still Isn’t Closed</a>.  I guess I see many gaps in the case, and feel that the pursuit of a lead is not the same as "stating that the case is closed."

I guess I also wonder why the case and the previous media frenzy of anthrax and Saddam seem so similar, almost as a script, I would like to see some investigative journalism follow the last story of pre-war allegations where the "story seems fishy"

<A HREF = "http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,987885,00.htmlhttp://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,987885,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,987885,00.html</a>

From 1998 there was a similar Anthrax hoax where Americans were connected to Saddam, the story is below.  I have an old cartoon from the Las Vegas Sun that is illuminating and will have on my website soon...

Story below...

Monday, Mar. 02, 1998
Catching a 48-Hour Bug
By TAMALA M. EDWARDS

The talk of anthrax had been in the air for days as America focused on Saddam Hussein and his germ-making factories: of how quickly the bacteria could kill, how widely the havoc could spread, how easily the deadly spores could be obtained. And the nightmare seemed to materialize on American soil last week after the FBI arrested two men at a medical complex in Henderson, Nev. In their possession were eight to 10 flight bags containing what federal agents believed to be anthrax. More troubling was the fact that one of the men was Larry Wayne Harris, a self-styled microbiologist with white supremacist sympathies who, after an arrest in 1995 in connection with the possession of three vials of bubonic-plague bacteria, had been under a federal probation order forbidding his "conducting any experiments with or obtaining any infectious diseases, bacteria, or germs." The criminal complaint that cited the prohibition also noted that Harris had told an unidentified group last summer that he planned to release bubonic-plague germs at a New York City subway station. Tabloids in Manhattan promptly blared headlines like SUBWAY PLAGUE TERROR and FEDS NAB 2 IN TOXIC TERROR.

The trouble was that the other man arrested was William Leavitt Jr., an unlikely biowarfare blackguard. The father of three owns biomedical labs in Nevada and Germany, but was known mostly for his quiet ways, civic and business responsibility and devout Mormon life-style. Indeed, he appeared confused by the entire incident. Asked at his arraignment if he understood the charges being brought against him, he said, "Not exactly." Leavitt's lawyers said their client and Harris did not possess anthrax but were instead carrying anthrax vaccine and were testing a device that would neutralize bacterial toxins in the human body, exactly the kind of gadget a country on the verge of war with anthrax-oversupplied Iraq would be happy to develop. One of Leavitt's lawyers charged that the FBI's informant, from whom Harris and Leavitt would have bought the bacteria-neutralizing device, was a scam artist with two convictions for extortion. On Saturday the FBI said that the anthrax found was a nonlethal form used in animal vaccine. Possession of bacteria, even anthrax, is not illegal if criminal intent cannot be proved. Leavitt was released on Saturday.

Harris, who is under probation specifically over bacteria, may remain under scrutiny. A New York City tabloid called him a "mad scientist." And, if all this had been a movie, Harris might well have been sent by central casting. The 46-year-old has a full beard and a spastic eye. Then there is his home in Lancaster, Ohio. The first thing you notice when you enter Harris' world is the smell, the stench of numerous cats and dogs in a cramped bungalow. This is laced with the subtler scent of a basement filled with dried foods, stockpiled for the aftermath of the coming race war. Enter Harris' bedroom and you will find lab equipment and a refrigerator, from which Harris pulls a sample of a growth medium for cultivating biological weapons. Talking of biologically induced mass death, he nonchalantly remarked to CNN producer Henry Schuster, "A terrorist would need very little of this."

In the visit by CNN, Harris noted that "you could lose 200,000 plus in [a biological] attack"--something he labeled an inevitability. "That is merely prelude to what is gonna happen." Published reports last week had him traveling America inoculating people against anthrax. But he has a clear taste for celebrity and overblown rhetoric that worries even right-wing militiamen who see doomsday eye to eye with him. John Trochman warned members of his Montana Militia against Harris in a May 1997 newsletter and requested that he be expelled from a survivalist expo for "exhibiting weapons of mass destruction." "The lure for the terrorist is anonymity," says Brian Levin, director of the Center on Hate and Extremism at New Jersey's Stockton College. "It is counterintuitive to be a celebrity of right-wing warfare. I mean, if you were planning a terrorist attack, would you show up on TV?" Just before his arrest, Harris had taped three segments for a local Nevada TV talk show. When ABC recently sought Harris' opinion on anthrax, he told Diane Sawyer, "It's no big deal. Five-gallon container of anthrax spraying over Manhattan; 48 to 72 hours, you're looking at 500,000 people dead."

Harris is the author of a self-published book called Bacteriological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America, which goes into detail about the culturing of biological agents (as well as blueprints for easy-to-make weapons to take out America's power grid), all the while arguing that this knowledge is important if Americans are to protect themselves from such threats. He first made his way onto the federal radar in the 1980s. When Harris was a student at Ohio State, his association with the Aryan Nations, a violent white separatist group, prompted the Secret Service to check him out to be sure he wasn't a threat to George Bush, who was scheduled to visit the campus. When police searched his home in 1995, they found a certificate stating that Harris had risen to the rank of lieutenant in the Aryan Nations.

In 1995 Harris used the letterhead of the food lab that employed him to order $240 worth of bubonic-plague bacteria from the American Type Culture Collection based in Rockville, Md. Alerted by a suspicious ATCC employee who contacted a colleague at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, authorities searched Harris' home and found the three vials of freeze-dried plague in the glove compartment of his car and the man himself full of bizarre excuses. Harris claimed he had ordered the plague as research for his book, which he described as a safety manual inspired partly by an Iraqi woman who told him Saddam Hussein was preparing to release supergerm-carrying rats in the U.S. Harris, however, couldn't be charged with anything stronger than mail and wire fraud. In fact, what the feds wound up doing to Harris was make him a star of sorts. Congressmen used his name in offering antiterrorism bills, and journalists came looking for the odd man who got away with ordering the plague. Now, he is the man to see about anthrax.

--With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles

 

 

This all about oil wrapped in the veil of an historical feud. Sound familiar. Russia has us by the cojones because of that. Obama wants us free of foreign oil (that means Russia's oil as well), in 10 years. McCain's plan call for us to be free in 17 years. That's the essence of and the major difference between their energy policies. This is a prime example of how oil affects our national security.

...it's because they like to be on a first name basis w/ the one making the decisions...Sorry if that offends those of you who ARE capable of keepin' it zipped...I've heard that God gave men a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to operate one at a time, but give me a break! If testosterone is really THAT powerful, then maybe we need get it outlawed.

I really do wish that people's personal lives weren't so much a part of the public debate, but let's face it...when you go into public office, you trade in your personal life for it. It's not like the rules have changed...everyone went into the race knowing that. And to completely honest, if a man's wife can't trust him, why should we? How CAN we? He loves her and screwed over her...he doesn't even like us...where would be his hesitation in screwing over us? This was SEX, people...He was willing to risk everything for SEX. Even if it was mind-blowing, no one's ever done it this good sex...was it worth EVERYTHING?

Good judgement and integrity is what it is all about...this does not show either. It screams "I'm selfish, this is what I want at this moment, and by God, I don't care if it hurts my wife, my kids or my country...I want it, and I want it now, and I'm going to have it"...not the kind of person I want in the White House.

And if that isn't bad enough, he ran for President KNOWING that this was lurking out there...If that doesn't show a HUGE disconnect with reality, I don't know what does. We're lucky we skated on that one...Hillary must REALLY be pissed...

I don't care if he did it when his wife was in remission or had full blown cancer...I don't care if he conceived a child or not...the point is, he did a completely stupid thing, lied about it repeatedly, and , yes, I think it disqualifies him from being president. Now if he had gone in saying here's what I've done, if you still want me to be President, I'll run...that would be a different story. I think that's probably why McCain is getting a pass on his adultery...everyone knows about it, and they want him anyway...go figure...

As for Elizabeth? I don't know what to think about her. I know that she has more on her plate than she could possibly deserve. My heart goes out to her. She's had her world rocked on more than one front. She made a decision for the sake of her family to forgive him. That's her business. She sees something in him that transends the obvious violation of trust. I'm sure she's thought about what happens to the kids if I don't make it through this cancer and I haven't forgiven him. I'm sure she's thought about what would happen if she does survive and divorces him, facing a lifetime of her children having to chose between their parents, uncomfortable Christmases, graduations, births of grandchildren...Women are capable of forgiving a lot to keep their family whole.

What concerns me is that she covered for him, not only making it possible for him to deceive us, as well as her, but also INSURING that she would get to live out this tragedy in public instead of behind closed doors. Not sure what the motivation is on her part...not sure it's any of our business except that she would have been complicit in handing the election, gift-wrapped to the GOP, had he been the nominee.

The ONLY good thing is he's not the nominee, he's not the running mate and it shouldn't hurt the Dems...maybe it will have the positive effect of reminding some of the conservatives that McCain is cut out of the same cloth...gotta look for those silver linings...

We've been admonished to stop talking about people's private lives; read posts that should be the definitive response; join in a thread bashing of the sad protagonist to this tale; recognize that the story isn't going away; bash a journalist/pundit for suggesting there may be (or not) some effect on a particular campaign; and just share our thoughts, which can (and does) lead to more bashing of all parties.

I  think talking about it is a good thing. But I also think we have to talk about it from a more cool-headed perspective. Those who think the media's breathless coverage is overdone are right, but suggesting that this is a "one and done" story is not.

Once upon a time, I used to think like many of you: it's just a tawdry tale about sex, a private matter, forget about it, just move on. But I came to change my mind; a slow and unexpected metamorphosis.

In 1991-2, a charismatic, young governor from Arkansas and his wife were running for the Democratic nomination. Rumors abounded that the governor had had a long-standing, extra-marital relationship with a flashy blonde. It was denied, as were rumors of other infidelities. One day the blonde surfaced. Looking like Krystal Carrington of television's "Dynasty," she gave a showy press conference revealing the details of the affair. Audio tapes were released that seemed to confirm her side of the story. The denials were reformulated and an appearance on "60 Minutes" seemed to assuage voter concerns. Their marriage had been through a rough patch, they said. It was a "private matter," I said. "As long as it doesn't happen again," I thought. Surely someone who would running the most powerful country in the world would be far too busy to play "hide the salami" while on the job.

But I was caught off guard by the new allegations that the then governor had used the authority of his office to "connect" with women in his employ and use men in his employ to round them up. Persons close to the recently minted President assured me that this damaging information was being put forth by the opposition for nefarious purposes. Other damaging information was also being spread. I believed it had to be false. Consider the source I was told. And I did and I believed it was false. After all we had more pressing business to deal with.

One day, during a government shutdown during a budget stalemate, there was a pizza party. Unexpectedly, the President dropped by. Months later, rumors started circulating that a relationship had developed between the President and a young female intern. I believed it was false until facts forced me to believe that it was true.

However, like a lot of my friends and acquaintances and fellow Democrats, I believed it was a private matter between the man and his spouse. I argued that vehemently to practically anyone who would listen. 'What if they have an arrangement, an open marriage, and we just don't know about it?" "What business is it of ours to know what goes on in their marriage?" "After all, it's just sex. There are more important things to be concerned about."

I said that all through the long, drawn out investigation, through the depositions, through the House impeachment hearings, through the trial in the Senate, through the remaining days of his time in office, through the settlement announcements, through the day I bought his book.

One day, after the current President was inaugurated the first time, I watched a PBS Frontline series on the previous President's administration. That was when it hit me. I had been wrong.

It was never about the "sex with a woman not your wife in the White House." It was not telling the truth about it. And it wasn't just about not admitting the affair, it was the scope of the machinations to hide it. But what bothered me the most, now, on that day, was the realization that I had been given fair warning in 1991 and 1992. And I had not paid heed.

The problem with this new scandal of the former two-time Presidential candidate and Veep nominee, for me, is that he saw first hand what could happen. He ventured forth his damning opinion about the other President. And still he took a collossal risk and got caught. But worse, knowing that it was not the sex, but the lying about the sex that doomed the other President, he did not learn from that mistake, and committed it just the same. 

He saw how dogged the media can be once attracted to a story. He knew that ever since Gary Hart had challenged the reporters following him to prove he was have a dalliance with Donna Rice, that the same coverage and worse would be meted out for the likes of him -- and by that I mean the young, good-looking, charismatic, sexy politicians who would naturally attract female companions. (We can complain that McCain doesn't get the same treatment with regard to his affair some 25 years ago and the divorce of his first, or the rumored more recent affair with a lobbyist. True, but different.)

And what about her, the other woman? At fortysomething, surely she knew better, too. She knew he was married, had a grown daughter and two young children. She knew his wife had cancer, which at the time of their affair was in remission. She knew any affair -- factual or fictional -- was highly likely to go public. Whispers abound when two people not married to each start spending a lot of time around one another. She knew what was coming. Apparently, she took money to maintain her silence and compliance.

How one arranges the personal detail of one's life is one's business. Except that it isn't. That this affair came wedged between two runs for the White House does raise questions. That money was paid for silence does raise questions. That the private affair became a matter of a public lie does raise questions. That he should have had the judgment to make a better decision -- given recent history of what could happen to him -- does raise questions. That he chose the riskier path does raise questions. That he chose to lie about it or not reveal it about the time he confessed to his wife or when the rumors surfaced last year (thus putting an end to it) does raise questions. 

When this story broke, I raised the question of whether or not this would be the end of his political career. I didn't know then and I don't know now.

I do know that I can't ignore this relative to him. I do know I think less of him as a husband and father. I think less of him for lying about it. 

If he were the nominee against McCain would I vote for him? Probably, more than likely, yes. But it would make me suspicious of him, and defending him would be much harder. 

And now, having said that, I'm going to try to refrain from talking about it any further. At least not here.

Well, it should come as no surprise. Give the mainstream media a sordid little story and their inner tabloid is bound to come out. I expect so little of that cast of talking heads, but was aghast yesterday no less to watch pundit after pundit carving poor John Edwards up.

I had been getting my usual afternoon exercise, and my usual dose of drivel from the MSM, but had hardly expected to witness a smut party. All the hand wringing over Edward’s affair drove me to switch back and forth from MSNBC to CNN. I even tried the dreaded Fox News, expecting sooner or later, someone would state the obvious. Let he who is perfect cast the first stone. It was not forthcoming.

There were the so-called liberal operatives getting themselves safely away from the scene of the crime, the right-wing apparatchiks waxing indignant, David Bonior throwing Edwards under the bus. Even the usually level-headed Jack Cafferty was beginning to foam at the mouth. Only Roger Simon of Politico could drag himself to admit that Edward’s statement, released while the shows were in progress, had been a sincere expression of remorse. Everyone else simply got more indignant over the “99%” clause. They’d have put poor Jesus on a cross. 

My heart goes out to you, John, on both accounts. You must suffer the wounds of your own infidelity, and then be dragged around in a form of public lynching.

I have committed many sins of my own, and will no doubt make more, but I come at this today as a man who loves a woman with all his heart. In such a way, that I have never once been tempted to betray her trust. I thank God everyday that I have been given to adore someone in that way. I thank God for these feelings of devotion. I wouldn’t know how to face my sweetheart if I fell from grace in a similar way. 

But that only makes me more compassionate of others, and but reminds me this is about choosing people for public office, and the absurdity of doing so on the basis of their private peccadilloes. If the measure of worthiness is whether or not someone has committed a sexual transgression, we would never have had Roosevelt, or Kennedy. The list goes on and on.

What we’ll always end up with instead is the milquetoast of a Coolidge, the moral rigidity of Reagan and Bush, or a scoundrel like Tricky Dick. People who don’t have to wear a red face during Sunday’s sermon, perhaps, but who will publicly admit they don’t possess that vision thing, who can’t form a proper sentence, who aren’t the best of the best. 

More so, we will forever find ourselves as a nation in this self-righteous Calvinistic, witch-hunting mode, the stones being passed around, preparing to punish the sinner, forgetting that we have, or are certainly capable of, doing the same damned thing ourselves.

I'm continuing to follow polling from Votemaster Andrew Tanenbaum's www.electoral-vote.com, this week I've run another pair of simulations of the general election. Most state polls have a 4% margin of error, so one simulation uses that. Those numbers are a reflection of what would happen if the states followed the most recent polling results in each state, taking into account random sampling error as the only source of variability. In addition, for the past several weeks I've used a wider margin of error to try to capture some possibility of movement beyond just sampling error. Taking the 2004 data I've done a linear regression fit assuming the error of polls declines the closer to the election we come. That regression currently gives an 11.9% margin of error, so that's the other simulation.

4% Margin of Error
Obama wins 98.93%, averages 298.8 EV (low 252, median 297, high 367)
McCain wins 0.48%, averages 239.2 EV (low 171, median 241, high 286)
Electoral tie 0.59%

11.9% Margin of error
Obama wins 87.1%, averages 299.3 EV (low 181, median 299, high 391)
McCain wins 12.1%, averages 238.7 EV (low 147, median 239, high 357)

This week's numbers are not materially different from last week's, but there may perhaps be slight movement in McCain's favor.

In the 4% margin of error simulation I noticed the unusual case that an electoral tie (in which case Obama would likely become president in the ensuing state-by-state vote of the House of Representatives) was more likely than all of the winning McCain scenarios combined.

If Obama wins all the states Kerry won, plus Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, then he gets to exactly 269 electoral votes. Obama is currently leading in all of these states right now, plus Indiana and Colorado, giving him a cushion of 20 electoral votes.

Compared with last week's numbers, the new state polls do mostly show gains for McCain. A Survey USA poll gives McCain a 6 point lead in Florida, , and a Rasmussen poll has McCain leading by 7 in Missouri. In Wisconsin, where Obama had double-digit leads in June and July, two new polls have Obama ahead by 6 and by 4.

In Oregon, Survey USA finds a 3 point lead, down from a 9 point lead in a Rasmussen survey in July. The two firms have done several polls of Oregon, with Survey USA usually showing a much closer race. Indeed their prior poll, from June, also showed Obama ahead by just 3, so this could simply be a difference in sample weighting between the two polling firms.

The best news for Obama this week is a poll now giving him a 7 point lead in Michigan, one point short of his largest lead this year. The other new polls were in states where one candidate has a large lead.

The state polling had been basically static since Obama got a bounce from clinching the Democratic nomination. The past two weeks may now indicate a small shift starting towards McCain, but Obama is still has a commanding lead in the current electoral map. McCain needs a surge in the polls to be able to win.

It is possible that McCain's attacks are starting to have an effect. Conventional wisdom is that most of the public doesn't really pay attention to the race until after Labor Day anyhow, so it's quite possible to read way to much both in the current state of polling (still quite favorable to Obama) and the recent changes (mostly in McCain's direction).

I'll be on vacation for the next few weeks, likely without internet access, so I this may be my last update before Labor Day.

Jonatha's feisty like Ani DiFranco - but nowhere near as angry.

Linger - Jonatha Brooke

Linger with Lyrics

West Point - Jonatha Brooke

A college girlfriend had Michael Franks - The Art of Tea, and I've kept up with him ever since. He was just as crisp in concert as on his recordings.

The Art of Love - Michael Franks

Antonio's Song - Michael Franks

Under the Sun - Michael Franks Chuck Loeb Eric Marienthal (live 1991)

Your Secret's Safe With Me - Michael Franks Chuck Loeb Eric Marienthal (live 1991)

Your Secret's Safe With Me - Michael Franks (1985 video)

When Sly Calls - Michael Franks

Annie can sing anything:

Love Song For A Vampire - Annie Lennox

Sing - Annie Lennox

Every Time We Say Goodbye - Annie Lennox

Improvisation - Django Reinhardt

Tears by Django and Stephane - Bireli & Phillip

 

August 9, 2008 (LPAC)--Lyndon LaRouche today denounced British agent George Soros, for his hand in the ongoing London-led efforts to trigger World War III in the Caucasus. Soros is the financial and political godfather of both Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and the purported Democratic Party Presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/08/09/larouche-denounces-obamas-godfather-george-soros.html

Try the Barack Roll, it's delicious.  Much better than the Rick Roll.

Having fun wish you were here.  And all TPM and the rest of this country can think about are the Olympics and John Edwards

Pray for the poor Georgian suckers who surged for Bush's Beruit Spring


President George W. Bush poses with U.S. Women's Beach Volleyball team player Misty May-Treanor (L) and Kerri Walsh while visiting the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Grounds at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing August 9, 2008

The Limits of Love (NyT).



there were signs that Mr. Saakashvili was feeling the limits of how much American help he could expect after signing up as an ally in Iraq.

McMorons Attack O!'s "elite education"

Those idiots are making it easier to run against the Grand Old Plutocracy every day

Obama's elite schooling may prove a risky topic for McCain, who attended St. Stephen’s, an exclusive school in Alexandria, Va., and then Episcopal High, a private boarding school in the same city, in the 1950s. The son and grandson of Navy admirals, he ended up at the Naval Academy, where, as he often reminds voters, he finished near the bottom of his graduating class.

He may be one of the few journalists out there that truly understands what kind of election this is becoming:

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/08/edwards.html

The last quote in parentheses just cinches the current media environment:

"(If tearing down Obama is the only way he can win--and this should be obvious, but apparently it isn't--McCain doesn't deserve to win.)"

Here's the link. It's a devastating analysis of McCain's false claims about Obama's tax proposals.

text

The Yes on 8 side of California's Prop. 8 battle is indignant.

Yet another judge has let them down, this time by refusing to change the Prop. 8 title to suit their campaign.

In response, the Yes on 8 campaign is now distributing this press release that includes this claim:

In a review of the past 50 years of ballot measures, this is the only initiative among 250 initiatives that an Attorney General has assigned a negative verb for its Title & Summary.

Really?

I mean, it sounds like it might be true, so let's go back 52 years:

1956 Prop 5:  ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE ESTABLISHMENTS

Eliminates present provision ...

1956 Prop 16:  CIVIL AND CRIMINAL APPEALS

Deletes present time limits ...

And I'm sure there's more.  Just run a search at the California Ballot Measures Database.

That said, I suspect that even the "50 years" claim is bogus.  For example:

1994 Prop 191:  Effective January 1, 1995, eliminates justice courts ...

1996 Prop 199:  Phases out local rent control laws ... eliminates controls on rent for space ...

And there's more, but you get the idea.

How stupid do these people think we are?

Chino Blanco

If only I could post pictures here, for this one is a doozy!

Join in the Caption Contest fun.

You are going to LOVE this photo. I put it in Muckaker because it's a little creepy.

Bring forth your best captions!

It was 34 years ago yesterday, and, despite its historical significance there was no mention of this anniversary, nor the obvious parallels between what we expect to happen this election year and the “liberation” that Americans of all political stripes felt when Richard Nixon finally called it quits.

 Our new president put it well the next day, when after being sworn in, he proclaimed, memorably, that “our long national nightmare is over.”

 But then he went on, and in the excitement of the moment, we let it pass as he claimed, “Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”

I had not started law school yet, though Nixon and Watergate had certainly pushed me in that direction. I took the law boards on the day the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon, but I knew, without a legal education, that President Ford was wrong: the Constitution had not worked and that our great republic was no longer a government of laws, but rather one of the most craven of politicians who would try to and usually succeed in getting away with as much as they could. I learned all of this, if I had not surmised it before, during the “long national nightmare” itself.

 The President’s crimes had been laid bare before an astonished nation during the hearings of the Special Select Committee of the Senate chaired by Senator Ervin during the spring and summer of 1973. When its co-chairman famously posed the question before the committee and the nation as “what did the President know and when did he know it,” the committee heard the testimony of the former White House counsel that almost fantastically placed the President of the United States in the middle of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. And what happened? Nothing.

We were told that it was just the former counsel’s word against that of the President of the United States. (I learned years later that if a jury believes that sworn testimony proves beynd a reasonable doubt that someone committed a crime, that will usually be sufficient to convict the defendant, especially in a federal prosecution, and I suspected that was so even then, but it was the President we are talking about, so okay....). We were told that the testimony of the earnest young man who had served as counsel was so dramatic that it could not possibly be true.

This young man said to the President of the United States that there is a cancer on the presidency? Impossible. But then, even more incredibly, the right question was asked of Alexander Butterfield, as obscure a staff member in the White House as there could be, and, sworn to tell the truth, he told the committee that a system to record conversations the President had with others had been in place at the time in question and, low and behold, when at least some of those tapes were finally disclosed, it turned out that the counsel, John Dean, had told the truth and, in fact, had used exactly the “cancer on the presidency” phrase which was said to be so unlikely.

Yet in the meantime, a new Attorney General nominated by the President, was obligated to promise he would appoint a “Special Prosecutor” who, with complete independence, would take charge of the criminal investigation of the crimes which might have been committed by the President and others. Without that promise, he could not be confirmed so he made the promise, was confirmed and then made the appointment.

Then the Special Prosecutor quite naturally decided that any grand jury investigation of this sort would need to hear the tapes we now knew to exist and issued a subpoena for them. The President responded by instructing the Attorney General to direct that the Special Prosecutor withdraw the subpoena or be fired.

The Attorney General, who had promised the independence of the Special Prosecutor as a condition of his own confirmation, refused the President’s instructions, and resigned. The Deputy Attorney General did the same thing.
The next man on the rung, the Solicitor General (a man named Robert Bork, who was later nominated, but rejected, to become a Justice of the Supreme Court) did the deed. Was the President forced to resign then? No.

Was he impeached for trying to prevent a prosecutor from investigating him? No.

A new special prosecutor was appointed instead and, though he was ostensibly less likely to confront the President, he sought to enforce the subpoena. When the case finally got to the Supreme Court, it unanimously rejected a claim of executive privilege (and one that argued that there was but one executive branch, headed by the President, and the Court could not resolve issues between officials within that branch) and sustained the subpoena. (We later learned that the president’s chief of staff responded to the decision by questioning the President’s obligation to adhere to the decision, which, in my later educated opinion, would have amounted to a coup d’état.) Only then, when one of the tapes released included a conversation in which the President of the United States instructed that the head of the C.I.A. should lie to the F.B.I. to stop its investigation of the original break-in, was the President told he had to resign. And finally he did.

It is as hard to describe that process as the Constitution “working” since, but for the fortuitous taping system and the courage of some judges, lawyers, a few newspaper reporters, and some honest members of the administration, even the long national nightmare would not have succeeded in removing this crook from the presidency. And, sad to say, the new President’s giddy but understandable claim that the Constitution had “worked” was part of an inaugural speech that contained at least one utter falsehood, although only recently established as such. As discussed, in part, here, his claim in "a little straight talk among friends [that though] you have not chosen me by secret ballot, neither have I gained office by any secret promises: was, sadly, not true.

But what the hell: he buttered his own toast, he took the White House palace guard out of their ridiculous uniforms and, most importantly, Nixon was gone. But after the dust had settled and the new president replaced the chief of staff who had considered overthrowing the government in support of his corrupt President, the next man to take that job was Donald Rumsfeld, and, later, his deputy chief of staff took over for him. His name was Richard Cheney.

 And the lesson those two men took from Nixon’s demise was that the “imperial presidency” or “unitary executive” as they call it now, needed to be strengthened the next time they could, so as to prevent what had just occurred: that the people or the Congress might be forced into action to prevent the government from being subsumed into being a vehicle for the president to act as a monarch, and to have the absolute power they demanded.

They have succeeded.

Just as the proof was all around us in the summer of 1973, we have all known that the government has become the vehicle for the president for so many years. Cabinet officers are now described as having been “owned” by the president, rather than servants of the United States (“Secretary Powell, President Bush’s first Secretary of State”) and the “unitary executive” widely accepted. Those who have balked and left have disclosed perfidies that are simply shrugged off.

Paul O’Neill tells us of a president disengaged in economic matters, and focused on starting a war with Iraq from the moment he takes office, and nothing happens. The national security adviser discusses with the President a warning that Osama bin Laden is determined to attack the United States and, instead of doing anything about it, the President begins his re-election campaign fewer than nine months after taking office by doing a photo-op in Florida, while the predicted attack is taking place, and the result is a more popular president than imaginable.

And then this week, we find out that in order to further his plan to attack Iraq, ‘his’ White House created a phony letter which suggested that Iraq had something to do with these attacks which, of course, he knew to have been committed by bin Laden, an enemy of our enemy in Iraq. And what becomes of this treason? Nothing.

The Constitution did not work in 1973 and 1974 and its quaint division of authority between states and a federal government and between branches of that federal government, are all but moribund. Still we persevere and we try: a testament to the many in this country who will not accept the consequences of General Haig’s coup of 1974.

 A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece called  "Say It Ain't So, John" on The Huffington Post about concerns I had impending John Edwards scandal and the silence of the progressive blogosphere. That piece was well read on HuffPost, noted with some glee by the right wing blogs and largely ignored on left wing blogs. Infamously, I was also banned by The Daily Kos for writing about the Edwards scandal. Now that the story was has broken more or less as I predicted, I have a couple of thoughts.

First, this isn't going to go away anytime soon. There are too many open questions and now that the subject isn't verboten to progressives and the mainstream media everyone will be able to get into the pundit act. Information and new interviews are going to keep coming out every day or two for the next few weeks.

The story of the supposed liberal bias that suppressed the story will be played out and frankly I can only argue with it so much. I'm a realist about the media and I know the ideological blinders weren't the main factor keeping the Edwards scandal from the headlines. I also know the truly vicious reaction I got from the people at Kos and I also believe that if the same story were about Mitt Romney, I would have read a lot more about it on my favorite blogs. Rather than deny the bias in this case, I really hope progressives can step back and learn a lesson about dealing with hard truths.

The biggest reason the Edwards scandal is going to stay around is that any situation that involves prolonged deception takes a while to process. There are those moments that shake you awake at two in the morning where the history that you took for granted and the new reality suddenly snap into place. That process can't be hurried. It has it's own schedule and in this case the Edwards plan to clam up about it doesn't help. We need more honesty from them and a willingness to actually answer some of the hard, complex questions about the Edwards decision making process in pursuing the nomination and denying the story knowing what they knew.

I'm already sick of people saying they are already sick of this story. It's here, so let's let it run it's course. Is this a tabloid story? Well, tabloid is as tabloid does. When you skulk without your sick wife's knowledge to the Beverly Hills Hilton late at night to meet the former party girl filmmaker you had a secret affair with because you got a call from her psychic friend...hey, guess what? You're LIVING a tabloid, dude!

Adolph Reed is perhaps one of America’s most incisive thinkers, scholars and activist. However, when one thinks of today’s black public intellectuals, unlike Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West or Michael Eric Dyson, on the left, or Shelby Steel or John McWhorter or Thomas Sowell, on the right, Reed’s name infrequently comes up. Despite being an author of several books and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and activist, he is often under the radar. This is due to the fact that unlike the aforementioned “market intellectuals” who either sell attitude or provide glib rationalizations for audiences that have become markets, Reed tries to inform people of what they really need to know rather than what they what they want to hear.

In the May 2008 issue of The Progressive magazine, in which he writes a monthly column, he offered a trenchant argument regarding Barack Obama. We spoke for about forty-five minutes one Wednesday morning.

Norman Kelley: You have taken a pretty tough position on Obama. You have termed him: (a) “vacuous opportunist”; (b) a “performer with a good ear for how to make white liberals like him”; and then described him as: (c) a “neo-liberal.” Let’s go over those in some detail. If you hadn’t met him directly, you were in Chicago the same time that Obama came on the scene, right?

Adolph Reed: Right. I’d worked closely with his opponent [Alice Palmer] on the [Illinois] state race, who was the incumbent. There a set of unfortunate dynamics that played out there, which I don’t want to bore readers with, but we wind up having some negotiations with him. She had actually introduced him around as her successor and, primarily at the urging of people like myself and others in her inner circle, she decided to take back her commitment and hold onto her state senate seat.

So we were around the Obama people, as well as his broad camp of supporters at Hyde Park, there were a couple of fairly open meetings where we tried to discuss a way of solving this issue and couldn’t. And it turns out that what Obama did was get her thrown off the ballot by challenging her signature petitions.

That’s one interesting thing about Obama; he’s only had one real opponent for elective office prior to this [campaign] and that’s when he ran against Bobby Rush for a congressional seat and lost very, very badly.

Kelley: You also called him a performer who has a good ear for how to make white liberals like him. What’s your example of that?

Reed: Well, I guess the way I would put it in a different context is that he has a talent, and I think maybe his greatest talent, for saying enough of what the constituency that he’s talking to at the moment want to hear and saying it persuasively that he can leave them believing that’s he with them, while at the same time packing enough qualifiers so that he can deny the next day that’s what he’s actually meant. We saw him do that in the AIPAC speech even though he didn’t pack the qualifiers around it. He was very clear that Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel, and he said a couple of days later, “Oh, no, that’s not exactly what I meant.”

Kelley:  That sounds like a talent that people said about Bill Clinton.

Reed: Absolutely. He’s a black fulfillment of Clintonism, and I should put that in a different way: he is a fulfillment of Clintonism so thoroughly partly because he is black, at least nominally. Because you remember, Clinton, at least for some of us, had this infuriating practice and knack for connecting emotionally, or emotively, with black audiences. So he gets props for being able to connective emotively with a black audience while at the same time speaking through the black audience to a white racist audience, ultimately, telling black people they needed to take personal responsibility. He shilled for that hideous crime bill at a black church in Memphis and that kind of thing, and Obama can get a way with being even more vicious and victim blaming than Clinton because he is black.

And he’s done that consistently as well; the Philadelphia speech, the Houston speech where he’s going about “We have to stop feeding our children Popeye’s Chicken for breakfast,” the haughtiness at the NAACP. As I said in another interview last week, I might accept that this isn’t beating up on a racialized imagery of the black underclass, that’s attacking poor black people in a victim-blaming way, if he would go and tell the hedge fund operators that he talks to that that shouldn’t feed their kids the equivalent of Popeye’s Chicken in the morning or they need to be responsible fathers.

Kelley: You also used the term neo-liberal to describe him. Let’s explore that.

Reed: This connects in a certain way because what Obama has to offer is not a policy program that addresses inequality; he never talks about inequality. He’s talk about opportunity and responsibility…

Kelley: Which are Republican talking points…

Reed: …If you noticed when he met with evangelicals a few weeks ago, he pledged to them he would give them more HHS [Health and Human Services] and HUD [Housing and Urban Development] budget because government can’t solve the problems that afflict poor communities in inner cities. And this has been part of his rap from the very beginning, this line that structural problems are too big, that real solutions come the neighborhood, grassroots and from churches
and NGOs, and that’s like a hallmark of neo-liberalism.

In his meeting with evangelicals he got behind all the faith-based stuff; he basically gave them a promise to give them more of the budget than the Bush administration had while reiterating the claim that government can’t provide social services effectively. He has never taken a position on any kind of redistribution and his fiscal and economic policies are, as [New York Times columnist] Paul Krugman has pointed out, were to the right of Clinton who had begun as the DLC’s standard bearer. His foreign policy is no less imperialist than Bush’s foreign policy. Like Kerry before him, his argument is that the war on terrorism hasn’t been fought efficiently enough. He’s on record for wanting to expand it; to redeploy troops to Iraq to Afghanistan and even into Pakistan.

What’s interesting about this is that I noticed that Tom Hayden, who been slurping down that Kool-Aide on an IV for sometime, seemed to notice last month finally that Barack Obama wants to expand the war. Well, Obama said that more than a year ago. I mentioned that in my November column in the Progressive. So one of the things that is interesting and mind-boggling, and I don’t mean interesting in a good way, is the will to believe in Obama even from people whose political identification is with the left, liberal-left and have been for sometime.

Kelley: So, you don’t see the Obama campaign as a potential opportunity, opening a door, for progressive forces to set the national agenda?

Reed: Well, I know one isn’t, technically, suppose to answer a question with a question, but I’ll start out with one. If we can’t get him to pay attention to us now when he needs our votes, why do we think he’ll pay attention to us when he’s elected, if he’s elected? I’m feeling less and less likely that he’ll be elected. This is like the logic of the 2 a.m. booty call. We’re saying in effect, “Well, I know he’s always out in public with her and he seems happy, but he’s told me that he really wants be with me.” There’s no reason to believe past a certain point that if this is what he does, this is what he really will do.

Kelley: So, what does this say about left of center, progressive organizing? The left doesn’t seem to be able to make politicians pay attention to issue it considers important, so the left is forced to go along with the lesser of two evils. There doesn’t seem to be any substantive organizing on the left.  This has been the most organized that the left has been in a while. What’s been going on?

Reed: Well, I think you hit the nail on its head. The election season is too late to think about; it’s already happened.  It’s a little bit like what happens with these urban renewal projects: by the time we find out about them, it’s too late to do anything about them except to try and find some way to negotiate the best possible terms of surrender, and this is the way this election stuff is.

[To read the full interview, go to www.devilsadvocatedivision.blogspot.com/]

Adolph Reed is perhaps one of America’s most incisive thinkers, scholars and activist. However, when one thinks of today’s black public intellectuals, unlike Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West or Michael Eric Dyson, on the left, or Shelby Steel or John McWhorter or Thomas Sowell, on the right, Reed’s name infrequently comes up. Despite being an author of several books and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and activist, he is often under the radar. This is due to the fact that unlike the aforementioned “market intellectuals” who either sell attitude or provide glib rationalizations for audiences that have become markets, Reed tries to inform people of what they really need to know rather than what they what they want to hear.

In the May 2008 issue of the Progressive magazine, in which he writes a monthly column, he offered a trenchant argument regarding Barack Obama. We spoke for about forty-five minutes one Wednesday morning.

***

Norman Kelley: You have taken a pretty tough position on Obama. You have termed him: (a) “vacuous opportunist”; (b) a “performer with a good ear for how to make white liberals like him”; and then described him as: (c) a “neo-liberal.” Let’s go over those in some detail. If you hadn’t met him directly, you were in Chicago the same time that Obama came on the scene, right?

Adolph Reed: Right. I’d worked closely with his opponent [Alice Palmer] on the [Illinois] state race, who was the incumbent. There a set of unfortunate dynamics that played out there, which I don’t want to bore readers with, but we wind up having some negotiations with him. She had actually introduced him around as her successor and, primarily at the urging of people like myself and others in her inner circle, she decided to take back her commitment and hold onto her state senate seat.

So we were around the Obama people, as well as his broad camp of supporters at Hyde Park, there were a couple of fairly open meetings where we tried to discuss a way of solving this issue and couldn’t. And it turns out that what Obama did was get her thrown off the ballot by challenging her signature petitions.

That’s one interesting thing about Obama; he’s only had one real opponent for elective office prior to this [campaign] and that’s when he ran against Bobby Rush for a congressional seat and lost very, very badly.

Kelley: You also called him a performer who has a good ear for how to make white liberals like him. What’s your example of that?

Reed: Well, I guess the way I would put it in a different context is that he has a talent, and I think maybe his greatest talent, for saying enough of what the constituency that he’s talking to at the moment want to hear and saying it persuasively that he can leave them believing that’s he with them, while at the same time packing enough qualifiers so that he can deny the next day that’s what he’s actually meant. We saw him do that in the AIPAC speech even though he didn’t pack the qualifiers around it. He was very clear that Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel, and he said a couple of days later, “Oh, no, that’s not exactly what I meant.”

Kelley: That sounds like a talent that people said about Bill Clinton.

Reed: Absolutely. He’s a black fulfillment of Clintonism, and I should put that in a different way: he is a fulfillment of Clintonism so thoroughly partly because he is black, at least nominally. Because you remember, Clinton, at least for some of us, had this infuriating practice and knack for connecting emotionally, or emotively, with black audiences. So he gets props for being able to connective emotively with a black audience while at the same time speaking through the black audience to a white racist audience, ultimately, telling black people they needed to take personal responsibility. He shilled for that hideous crime bill at a black church in Memphis and that kind of thing, and Obama can get a way with being even more vicious and victim blaming than Clinton because he is black.

And he’s done that consistently as well; the Philadelphia speech, the Houston speech where he’s going about “We have to stop feeding our children Popeye’s Chicken for breakfast,” the haughtiness at the NAACP. As I said in another interview last week, I might accept that this isn’t beating up on a racialized imagery of the black underclass, that’s attacking poor black people in a victim-blaming way, if he would go and tell the hedge fund operators that he talks to that that shouldn’t feed their kids the equivalent of Popeye’s Chicken in the morning or they need to be responsible fathers.

Kelley: You also used the term neo-liberal to describe him. Let’s explore that.

Reed: This connects in a certain way because what Obama has to offer is not a policy program that addresses inequality; he never talks about inequality. He’s talk about opportunity and responsibility…

Kelley: Which are Republican talking points…

Reed: …If you noticed when he met with evangelicals a few weeks ago, he pledged to them he would give them more HHS [Health and Human Services] and HUD [Housing and Urban Development] budget because government can’t solve the problems that afflict poor communities in inner cities. And this has been part of his rap from the very beginning, this line that structural problems are too big, that real solutions come the neighborhood, grassroots and from churches and NGOs, and that’s like a hallmark of neo-liberalism.

In his meeting with evangelicals he got behind all the faith-based stuff; he basically gave them a promise to give them more of the budget than the Bush administration had while reiterating the claim that government can’t provide social services effectively. He has never taken a position on any kind of redistribution and his fiscal and economic policies are, as [New York Times columnist] Paul Krugman has pointed out, were to the right of Clinton who had begun as the DLC’s standard bearer. His foreign policy is no less imperialist than Bush’s foreign policy. Like Kerry before him, his argument is that the war on terrorism hasn’t been fought efficiently enough. He’s on record for wanting to expand it; to redeploy troops to Iraq to Afghanistan and even into Pakistan.

What’s interesting about this is that I noticed that Tom Hayden, who been slurping down that Kool-Aide on an IV for sometime, seemed to notice last month finally that Barack Obama wants to expand the war. Well, Obama said that more than a year ago. I mentioned that in my November column in the Progressive. So one of the things that is interesting and mind-boggling, and I don’t mean interesting in a good way, is the will to believe in Obama even from people whose political identification is with the left, liberal-left and have been for sometime.

Kelley: So, you don’t see the Obama campaign as a potential opportunity, opening a door, for progressive forces to set the national agenda?

Reed: Well, I know one isn’t, technically, suppose to answer a question with a question, but I’ll start out with one. If we can’t get him to pay attention to us now when he needs our votes, why do we think he’ll pay attention to us when he’s elected, if he’s elected? I’m feeling less and less likely that he’ll be elected. This is like the logic of the 2 a.m. booty call. We’re saying in effect, “Well, I know he’s always out in public with her and he seems happy, but he’s told me that he really wants be with me.” There’s no reason to believe past a certain point that if this is what he does, this is what he really will do.

Kelley: So, what does this say about left of center, progressive organizing? The left doesn’t seem to be able to make politicians pay attention to issue it considers important, so the left is forced to go along with the lesser of two evils. There doesn’t seem to be any substantive organizing on the left. This has been the most organized that the left has been in a while. What’s been going on?

Reed: Well, I think you hit the nail on its head. The election season is too late to think about; it’s already happened. It’s a little bit like what happens with these urban renewal projects: by the time we find out about them, it’s too late to do anything about them except to try and find some way to negotiate the best possible terms of surrender, and this is the way this election stuff is.

[To read the full interview, go to www.devilsadvocatedivision.blogspot.com/]

For the life of me, I do not understand how TPMEC has failed to post and comment on this ad.  To those who have not yet seen the Hands ad that will be playing during the summer games, do not miss it.

The "Hands" ad gracefully and beautifully artfully hits on many themes, values, and visions we, as a society, share, such as work and jobs, the environment, and technological progress to address some of our more pressing challenges.

Fortunately, the Obama campaign has not yielded to the hand-wringers in the Media and the blogs caught in 2004 Groundhog Day, and they have instead put out this Olympic ad which ignores all the armchair pundit advice to actually address and dignify the McCain tactics.

This ad, instead, hits positive, visionary and constructive notes and leaves little doubt that in this race, one candidate's message is optimistic, realistic and serious about much needed change while the other candidate, with his puzzlingly childish ads, deserves as much attention as Lyndon LaRouche does - that is, absolutely none.

What do you think?

Please Please Please let it be so......

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4af34942-65a1-11dd-a352-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=729ab242-9cb1-11db-8ec6-0000779e2340.html

    The point being like the 1936 Olympics, some world leaders were their making happy face while China put on this spectacular event knowing that their ultimate goal is world dominance. But unlike the 1936 Olympics our hypocrite of a President was their hopefully on his last vacation, because they hold the mortgage to our house. So that he can continue his war in Iraq with no cost to him or his corporate friends.

It's official.  I have joined the republican party and will be voting under that banner in November. 

No, I am not voting for McCain, I am just sick and tired of the self-righteous anger the democrats have lathered themselves into this year and being an independent  seemed so wishy-washy.  I cannot get behind any effort designed to paint millions of Americans with the crimes of a few simply because they call themselves conservatives. 

Would you give an abused woman one last ass kicking as she stumbled in the door of the shelter for not being wise enough or strong enough to leave earlier?

I am proud to bring announce the return of the Bull Moose faction of the GOP and the thinking that truly inspired FDR to craft his New Deal legislation some 20 years later.

Since I musing on the end of labels last month, I realized that little traction exists for giving them up altogether.  Perhaps they are too comforting to people?  At least two thirds of Americans identify as republican or democrat, so there is something in our make-up that looks to our fellow citizens for further refining of our political identities.  So, if labels are clearly not out, I figure why not offer a new one that is a little more precise.

I will leave you with a link to the inspiration behind the title of this post. 

I love Rage - both literal and figurative - but we aren't focused on the right targets.  Rage against the machine, not you fellow Americans.  Rage against injustice and intolerance and backward thinking not against moving forward together as a nation of reconciliation.  Rejoice in the idea that millions of republicans are already articulating a new way of thinking inside our party - don't waste your anger on impotent and illogical bursts of self destruction. 

Revolution (or in this case evolution) takes a little bit of time to get it right.

Alright, what's the practical and strategic response? How does it relate to Russia's pipelines supplying Europe with gas and oil? How does it relate to stability in the Mideast and our relations in Central Asia? How does it relate to Russia's nationalizing its oil and its handling of its nuclear weapons? Who's next on the list? What should be our future behavior/attitude towards Putin? Where too on the G-8? What part should the EU play vs. the US on a solution? What do you expect from the candidates?

Hi there, come on in.  It's very late, everyone is tired and a bit worn down after another long and active day.  Taking a moment to stop by means you might have something to say?

Speech is silver, silence is golden.  We've all heard that - but tonight your speech is golden and my silence necessary to hear your voice.  The sofa is soft, the lights are low and the dog is snoring loudly enough to drown out the music in the background.  Put your feet up and relax, you deserve it tonight as much as any one else on any other evening.

If you feel like talking, I'm here.  If you want quiet contemplation, you've got it.  If you crave a hug my arms are open.  Just let me know, what do you need?   

We, the people
do solemnly swear
to keep our eyes
shut and closed
and our ears stuffed with cotton

We, the people
do solemnly swear
to watch American Idol
and whatever new show
is the hottest new show
until it's forgotten

We, the people
do solemnly swear
to forget what others died for
while we fight on for
another lie in a stretch of lies

We, the people
do solemnly swear
to let our brains go
and our children go
into the land of closed eyes

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/08/david-gregory-broader-implications-for-the-party/

I was a Republican!

I voted for Bush I twice, Dole once, and Bush II twice.  I was always independent and did vote for some Democrats along the way, but I was in my College's Young Republicans and thought of myself as a Dewey Pay as You Go type.

I was from a Republican family with a liberal older sister that I would love to engage in debate and though she was a college professor I could mock her and make her look silly.

I became a teacher at first in the suburbs and then in the city, but through it all I was a Republican and in 2001 I donated to John McCain.  Then I remembered in 2003 the economy was tanking and we were starting to reallize how messed up the war in Iraq was.  Bush announced he was giving a press conference that day and I waited to see what the President was going to talk about--it was gay marriage.

I was neither homophobic nor concerned with gay rights, but I saw this as such a callous diversion that I lost all respect for Bush.  In 2004 I thought of myself as a Republican for Kerry. When my students asked me if I voted for Bush I told them, "Yes I did.  Now as an American it is my duty to fix that mistake."

By 2005 I wasn't a Republican for Kerry anymore.  I was a Democrat.  They say there is nobody that is more anti-smoking than somebody who has quit smoking and nobody preachier than a sinner that has found religion.  I found myself becoming more strident than most Democrats because I felt like I had been a fool since the third grade when I cried when Carter beat Ford.

This time around I've started a satirical blog called www.thatsrightnate.com.  I've donated to Obama and Bill Foster.  I've preached to anybody who would listen about the virtues of Obama and Clinton both.  I prefer Obama, but I still think Clinton had the best education platform of all the candidates.

Sometimes, we look at the other side and think they're a bunch of morons that can't be reasoned with.  That is true in a lot of cases, but sometimes they're just like I was--people who want the best for this country, but want to go about it in a different way than you.  I have several Republican friends who are voting for Obama this time.  They voted Republican because they wanted a government that stayed out of their business and was fiscally responsible--they're out to fix their mistake this time the same way I was in 2004.

There are Republicans that don't get it and won't get it, but I admire Obama's ability to take a cheap shot without the nead to return an equally cheap one because when we get past all this garbage most of us want a lot of the same things.  That's what gives me optimism in this election and beyond.  I admit we've stopped acting like it, but this is still an amazing country we've got here. 

I've got a green shopping bag (made of hemp) full of dog treats for Sox, and beer for the house, and I'm knocking at her door....

...but no answer.

With all that's going on, all I want is a friend to kick back with and talk about anything other than the politics going on tonight.

I keep knocking at her door.  I hear Sox barking inside.

I'm getting kinda worried.

Anyone want to join me outside her door and wait for the room to open?

 

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Let us be very fair about U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson. His chief fault is that he was virtually a certifiable "Baby Boomer," who came into government circles during the administration of Richard Nixon, but soon left, in a gesture of prudence, to assume a safer career-opportunity in the so-called "financial community." That is to emphasize, that he, like most Wall Street professionals of his age and younger, has had virtually no experience with a real economy. He is, essentially, like the rest of the Wall Street crowd, a gambler, not an economist.
http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/08/08/why-paulson-blundered.html

 

August 8, 2008 (LPAC)--The following letter is addressed to all democrats, and especially to those who may be attending the convention. It was written by LPAC's official spokeswoman, Debra Hanania-Freeman.

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/08/08/larouche-pacs-open-letter-democrats.html

Cause you know, John Edwards had an affair two years ago...

And then there's that important demostration of world peace, cooperation and goodwill that is the olympics...wouldn't want to ruin that...

Via the Washington Post (Howard Kurtz and Lois Romano) we now learn that,

Fred Baron, a Texas lawyer who was the finance chairman of Edwards's two presidential campaigns, in 2004 and this year, said in an interview that he has been sending unspecified sums of money to Hunter without informing Edwards. The payments helped Hunter relocate from North Carolina to a $3 million Santa Barbara home and helped Andrew Young -- a former Edwards aide who claims to be the baby's father -- move into a $4 million home in the same city. Edwards said he was unaware that money was being funneled to his former aides.

(my emphasis)

The obligatory question: Why,if not to buy her silence on behalf of his long time boss, was Baron sending this "unspecified" sum to Hunter?

The National Enquirer was more specific than WAPO in regards to the amount in their August 4th story:

NATIONAL ENQUIRER investigation has uncovered John Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter – the mother of his “love child” – has been secretly receiv­ing $15,000 a month as part of an elaborate cover-up orchestrated by the former presidential contender.

I see it's once again time to parade our national neurosis about sex to the entire world.

We all know that violence is A-OK. Dead babies? No problem. Decapitations, torture, maiming, and a booming business for prosthetic companies are unfortunate, maybe, but necessary.

But sex will have the entire country going apoplectic. The headlines are already trying to outdo each other. Just compare TPM with HuffPo.

I guess it's news, but keep in mind it's only big news because we're in America, a nation of seventh-grade gossips.

And spare me the talk about "lies." These are things that discrete people lie about.

It. Is. Nobody's. Business. (But the people involved.)

Fire away.

I wrote this as a response to womanofacertainage's beautiful post, In Which I Finally Get It. As I post this, it is currently the most recommended blog entry on the site, deservedly so. I encourage all those who have not read it to do so immediately.

I was encouraged to post this as a blog entry in and of itself, and so here it is, exactly as it was originally posted.

You know, it's interesting to hear you speak about people my age (I'm 20) in such a way, because the first thing I thought when I read what you wrote was, "She gets it. She understands why I am not some angry hysterical liberal whose only goal in this world is to see Bush and Cheney destroyed. She gets that, perhaps there are more important things, and more important goals to set our eyes on."

Even though I am 20, I have been angry in the same way you have, for years. In 2000, at the age of 12, I burst into tears when it finally came down that Bush had won instead of Gore. I had, at such a young age, invested so much of myself into the election. I had invested so much hope that Gore would win. I didn't truly know how frightening Bush was, but I think my tears were partly a harbinger to the next four years, when again, I would cry at Bush's second "victory".

I would love nothing more than to see Bush, Cheney, Rove and all their buddies behind bars for the crimes they've committed. But that is not what this election is about. This election is about the betterment of our country. It is about the betterment of myself, and of all the others I love and care about. And to achieve those ends, I do not see how continuous negativity, and continuous onslaughts of hatred will progress us anywhere.

We've gone through the past eight years in a continuous cycle of hatred, depression, hurt, fear and general negativity. I do not want to go into the next four with the same mentality. Obama does not want to give me, or you, or anyone else, that kind of mandate, as was given in 2000 and 2004. And for that, I respect and admire him.

The Russian 58th Army is taking care of that.  Meanwhile it is timely to consider two, and only two possibilities:

1. Saakashvili told the Idiot Bush in advance

2. He didn't even bother



Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili banked on Russia not having will to fight
Times UK

It looks, in retrospect, like a ruse that went badly wrong. After days of heavy skirmishing between Georgian troops and Russian-backed separatist militias in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian President, went on television on Thursday evening to announce that he had ordered an immediate unilateral ceasefire.

As promised so long ago (July 30), I dedicate this post to the best insults from my thread "Come On, Ya *#@$& Pukes, Get It Out of Your Systems!" This was so damn fun, I'll have to do it again as soon as Dick Cheney gets to heaven.

And the Grand Prize Winner is... (drumroll)

tpmgary! (rimshot)

You have no FACTS WATSOPEVER to back your post up. You're just another goddamn UNPATRIOTIC, ANTI-AMERICAN FAR LEFTS liberal WINGNUT who WHO WANT BLAKC MUSLIMS TO TAKEOVER YOU FREICKING UNGRATFUL RATBASTAERD COMMY with ties to elitists(sp?) and TERORISTS!!!
Posted by tpmgary

2nd Place goes to ttarleton:

Ripper McCord, my Arch enemy, your parachute obviously malfunctioned, leaving you a drooling wreck hunched over a filthy keyboard pecking out inanities such as this, pausing only occasionally to wander through the streets of St. Louis horrifying the citizenry, as you stumble to the riverbank to defile the mighty Mississippi by relieving yourself in its innocent waters.
Posted by ttarleton

3rd Place is quinn esq:

Dude. My best advice on editing your posts? 1. Select all. 2. Delete. 3. Send.
Ahhhhh..... I feel better already.
Thanks Rip. (Ya prick.)
Posted by quinn esq

Honorable Mention:

Ripper:
You're stances are wider than Larry Craig's
Posted by GayIthacan

OK,  I'll admit to have a personal viewpoint on this (I wass diagnosed with breast  cancer after I found out that my husband had an affair, so I can hardly be objective).  BUT WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING?

And what was Elizabeth thinking, either?  No one can get away with this kind of dishonesty and emotional mess!  Who would think that  the other person in an affair would accept the role of someone that was "not loved" or whatever.

My next question is this:  Why not tell the whole truth?  If this affair  occurred 2 years ago, and there is now a baby, and John Edwards was visiting the mother of the baby, who is the same person he now admits he had an affair with,  WHY IN THE HELL WAS HE MEETING WITH HER AND THE BABY IN A HOTEL A WEEK OR TWO AGO --why should we think it is not HIS BABY?

I am so disappointed in him, I don't even know what to say.  He made a point in making his devotion to his family a big point in his campaign.   At least Democrats demand honesty from their people.  John McCain cheated on his wife when she was dying, but you never hear a word about it.

The Edwards's situation should be private, but they chose to go forward with the Presidential bid despite this knowledge, so that is why it is public.  They should have known better.

I looked for Ani and found Dennis:

Ani DiFranco talks about Dennis Kucinich and plays

Dennis Kucinich and Ani DiFranco in Boston

Ani DiFranco - Hypnotized

Ani DiFranco - Shy

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog Voting Matters

By Nathan Henderson-James

Just yesterday we noted the right way to report on charges of voter fraud and the wrong way to go about it. We explained how the news media had been gamed by people with a partisan interest in the outcome of elections to gin up hysteria to engage in voter intimidation and voter disenfranchisement efforts.

Well, the partisans are back at it in Wisconsin, but this time the press is following the lead of Virginia journalists and scrutinizing the claims rather than simply reprinting the press release.

Here’s the backstory. The community organization ACORN has recently completed a voter registration drive in Milwaukee aimed at historically disenfranchised populations like low-income folks and African-Americans. The drive assisted voters complete some 35,000 cards. So far so good.

However, some of ACORN’s canvassers were caught forging cards in order to get paid for not doing the work. Under Wisconsin law all cards filled out, completely or incompletely, fraudulently or not, are required to be turned in. Out of the 35,000 cards, ACORN and Board of Elections officials estimate that about 1500-2000 of them had problems. The bulk of those were simple incompletes, but about 200 or so were clearly attempts by canvassers to defraud both ACORN and the state of Wisconsin by submitting false cards.

The traditional media has actually done a fairly good job reporting the story, going into great detail on how the cards were caught, the quality control procedures used by ACORN, and the context of the numbers involved versus the total number of cards submitted. This reportage has been ably supplemented by bloggers like Cory Liebmann at One Wisconsin Now and Capper at Cognitive Dissonance.

But, of course, this situation has served as an opportunity for conservative partisans to immediately pick up their calls for voter disenfranchisement policies such as voter ID. Such a policy would ironically, or perhaps not so ironically, actually push down the voter participation rates among those folks who most rely on voter registration drives to bring them into the civic participation process.

Here’s choice quote from Pete DiGaudio who writes as The Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger,

"Well, yes, I actually do support voter suppression. I am in favor of suppressing the vote of dead people, nonexistent people, convicted felons, illegal aliens, people voting more than once, et al. Every time one of these people votes, it cancels out my legitimate vote.

A simple thing like photo ID for voting would eliminate these fraudulent voters when they showed up at the polls."

Project Vote’s report The Politics of Voter Fraud (PDF) has consistently pointed out that there simply isn’t widespread voter fraud in the United States and any fraudulent voting has never been tied to voter registration fraud, which is what has partisans so breathless and hyperbolic.

But the rush to point to a solution like voter ID seems not to be bothered by facts. Like the fact that the so-called fraud every partisan points to is always centered on voter registration cards. Well, voter ID isn’t going to stop canvassers from wanting to get paid for not doing the work and it isn’t going to stop states like Wisconsin from requiring that every card be turned in regardless of its accuracy, completeness, or legitimacy and it’s definitely not going to help elections officials catch bad cards.

The truth is that the laws as written and enforced catch such problems. The mere fact of this story in the media means the system in Milwaukee works the way it is supposed to, catching problem cards. Voter ID, on the other hand stops something called "voter impersonation", which just doesn’t happen in the Untied States. Of the 24 convictions won by the US Department of Justice between 2002 and 2005 for voter fraud, most of them were for problems with submitting false or illegal absentee ballots. Voter ID laws do nothing to fix this problem. But what they are great at is stopping otherwise eligible voters from casting ballots.

And that’s how it works – raise loud cries of outrage over an illegal act that was caught using the safeguards that were put in place for just that situation, raise questions about the integrity of the entire elections system, and offer a solution that would not stop the identified problem and would, in fact, stop significant numbers of specific groups, generally groups who are already the most disenfranchised, from participating in elections.

Okay, this is the revenge and humiliation thread. I want to hear all the dishing, how Edwards is worse than Clinton because he lied over and over and over, cause he had more sex than Bill had (like real penetration - yes, we must get graphic), cause he's likely the father and still lying about that, how Elizabeth is craven for not divorcing him, how he was craven during her bout with cancer, how Edwards supporters were wrong wrong wrong for supporting him, how Obama supporters were wrong wrong wrong for thinking he was the better more honest alternative to the Clintons, how we can't trust John around women anymore and how if we ever see him in the same room as someone attractive we must make up rumors that they're obviously sleeping together and forever roll our eyes about what a tough dog he is to keep chained to the porch.

Okay, I started the ball, let's keep it rolling.

Several things lead me to believe that Rielle Hunter's baby is John Edwards':

1) Edwards implied that his "friends" or aides, not himself, might have given Hunter money while falsely believing that Edwards was the father.
But...does that make sense to you? Would anyone love Edwards so much to go as far as to pay someone large sums of money for her silence?

2) That National Enquirer picture in which someone who appears to be Edwards holds a baby in his arms in a hotel room.

3) Edwards' denial was not accompanied by paternity test results.

If I had to bet money, I'd bet the baby is his.

I can't believe that so many educated politicos are frustrated with the way the Obama campaign is addressing the repeated desperate attacks by the McCain campaign. First, it's DNC policy (as stated by Schumer recently on the Daily Show) to ALWAYS respond to a Repug attack ad within 24 hours. That's the DNC. In addition to that, the Obama campaign responds through various spokespersons as these red herrings are floated daily. This election MUST BE about the critical issues facing our nation and world at this time -- NOT about Paris or Britney or tire gauges or any of that nonsense designed only to distract. As such, it appears to me that Obama is playing it exactly right. Let others answer the nonsensical charges while the candidate stays on the issues. This keeps him above the fray and keeps the issues (that McCain and his pals in the MSM REALLY don't want to engage) in the news, in spite of their best(?) efforts to distract us.
Far from being a cause of frustration for me, the way Barack has been handling himself through all of this nonsense reminds me every day of why i support his candidacy.

Since John Edwards and his antsy pants are being treated, God help us as a news story to rival the war that the Russians started today, let me just point out one of the great things about living in a democracy.

Living in a democracy means not having to care who your political leaders sleep with.

This is one of the chief pleasures of democratic republics, as far as I am concerned. Seriously, would you want to picture George III in bed? If you natter and blatter about former senators tomcatting on their wives, then you refuse to take advantage of one America's greatest public luxuries. It's like living next to the Grand Canyon and staying in your basement all day, or having a lifetime subscription to the Met but deliberately listening to Muzak instead. A little appreciation, please.

It is one of our system's great achievements is to make it entirely irrelevant that our leaders are sexual nitwits. God forbid it be otherwise. Think about the monarchies in which the king or queen's erotic lives have had real political consequences. Think about changing England's national religion (and its foreign alliances) because of who got Henry VIII hot and bothered. Think about worrying if those things would change back because of, say, George IV's taste in women. Think about worrying about who the King of France took as his official mistress, and his unofficial mistress, and what that meant for government policies. And thank the Founders we never have to worry about that. Political happiness is not having to worry about whether the king can perform in bed, or about who coaches his the best performances. Amen.

But of course, we all know Edwards's sex life is supremely unimportant. We know it's not important because we can talk about it so freely.

In systems where the leaders sex lives' actually matter, no one is allowed to discuss their sex lives. This has always been true.

Let's just say there was no public polling about who Henry VIII married next, or who Louis XIV moved to better rooms at Versailles. If you had a complaint about who the king or queen was shtupping or trying to shtup or holding involved negotations about the possibility of shtupping, your choices were either to keep your tongue in your mouth or have it permanently removed. An English subject named John Stubbs once wrote a pamphlet about how the Queen, Elizabeth I, should absolutely positively not not not marry a foreigner, and above all not that perfumed Frenchman who was courting her. Her Majesty's government listened to his feedback, reflected upon his views, and decided to cut off his right hand.

In a representative democracy, of course, we are free to talk about our leaders' sexual misadventures and follies all we like. But it absolutely pointless, and not a hell of a lot of fun.

AKA maintaing white entitlement in the face of EXCEPTIONAL TALENT

Excerpted from:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=obamas_racial_catch22

The rapturous coverage of the Obama campaign during the primary was less about Obama himself than it was America congratulating itself for being willing to consider a black man for president, with the subtext being that the United States had finally liberated itself from its racist past. It established an unspoken contract that Obama’s success was proof that racism is no longer a serious problem, thus preempting any further discussion on the subject. But even as the mainstream media all but trumpeted his nomination as the end of racism in the United States, Obama continues to face a series of arbitrary and shifting public tests merely because he is black. His dilemma remains that the only way to succeed is to pretend that this double standard does not exist. He has to extricate himself from an ongoing racial competition between blacks and whites, where the prosperity of one is seen as detrimental to the other. The paradox is that by succeeding, Obama has raised the white anxiety about his presence to a level at which it can be exploited as resentment.

To put the “Britney” ad in context, and to understand the troubling racial dynamic that is fertile ground for exploitation by the GOP, it’s helpful to consider the concept of “Jockey Syndrome.” In his book 40 Million Dollar Slaves, journalist William C. Rhoden chronicles the history of (mostly male) African Americans in sports. He defines Jockey Syndrome, as what occurs when “the establishment attempts to change the rules when the competition begins to gain ground.” It refers specifically to the phenomenon of changing the rules in certain sports to end black American dominance, which began with the expulsion of black jockeys from equestrian sports at the turn of the century. Once white athletic dominance was re-established through changing the rules of the game, declining black prowess was held up as proof of black inferiority.

Jockey Syndrome is easily applicable to many situations involving race relations in America — look no further than the constantly shifting and often arbitrary expectations for Obama. When it came to coverage of his trip to Europe, the question of whether he could be “presidential” abroad immediately gave way to questions of whether the impression he made was too good. Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article on whether the candidate is “too fit” to be president. From flag pins to pledges of allegiance, Obama has been forced through a series of arbitrary public tests because of his race, where even his obvious strengths inspire questions about his leadership. Ironically, his tendency to meet or exceed expectations in many of these instances is precisely what makes the “Britney” ad possible.

THIS is how Obama needs to advertise:

http://therealmccain.com/

So the other day John Quinn of Parma, OH, tried to show up Barack Obama by interrupting a policy speech with the Pledge of Allegiance. (h/t to Andrew Sullivan and The Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Obama's aplomb is remarkable, and it occurs to me that being able to handle irrational and overwrought people is an important presidential skill. But what's interesting is that the heckler, who identified himself as "John Q. Public," feels that he has scored a major triumph, and continues to admonish the reporters taking his statement afterward:

You all learned the Pledge of Allegiance in first grade ... all right? Your Senator ... your Governor ... nobody started this town hall meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America (sic)? You gotta be serious! Somebody shoulda did that. Don't disrespect that flag!

Making fun of this poor man would be easy, useless, and cruel. I'm sure cable news has already been doing it for hours. And obviously there's a difference between the the leadership of the Republican party and a guy who disrupts public meetings. But this is the difference:

The Republican party only makes the talking points up. Poor Quinn takes them seriously.

What clearly upsets Quinn is a lack of patriotic ritual, which he identifies as patriotism. The flag itself deserves respect. But one can honor a flag with words and dishonor everything that flag stands for. That might be the epitome of Bush conservatism: shred the Bill of Rights but honor the flag.

It reminds me of certain ritualistic or pietistic approaches to religion, where ceremonies and verbal formulas take the place of the actual ethical belief system. It's far, far harder to live a life of Christian kindness, forgiveness, and humility than it is to say recite a whole lot of prayers and have a good attendance record at services. (The distance between the two efforts is something like the difference between winning the Olympic Marathon and watching the Olympic Marathon on TV; the latter might or might not be tedious, but you won't strain anything.) There's nothing wrong with these ceremonies and formulas themselves (although Jesus himself vigorously disagreed); every faith has them. The problem lies in treating them as important in themselves rather than as mere reminders. Saying the rosary after looting a charitable foundation is grotesque; singing "The Star Spangled Banner" while the separations of powers erodes is no achievement.

The conservative political strategies of recent years have shamlessly peddled the reduction of both faith and patriotism to a series of effortless gestures. Anyone can wear a flag pin; anyone can stand for the national anthem. It's appealing, because it allows people to feel like patriots without sacrifice. Everything John Quinn Public needs to do to feel like a patriot, he quite literally learned in grade school. No more effort is required to be "patriotic" in this way than was required when you were six. No more will be asked of you, except perhaps to scold and shame people who don't participate in the simple rituals. (Complaining about who does and doesn't wear a flag pin is like complaining about whether the nurses in the charity hospital wear personal crucifixes or not.)

The conservatives, to their shame, have been selling "patriotism" as a fashion choice, although the best of them know better. And they have set the bar for patriotism at a child's height. The questions of how we honor America, and how we commit to the American experiment, are far more difficult and complicated. It's time to make this election about what patriotism really is.

Oh, yeah, and DISCUSSING THEM TO NO GODDAMN END.
That is all. Thanks.

In 1935, some of Roosevelt’s advisers were fretting over the rising power of Louisiana Senator Huey Long and California doctor Charles Townsend; they wanted him to come out swinging against his potential challengers.  They particularly hoped he would take the political implications of Townsend seriously, even though many laughed at the his plan for old age insurance. 

As usual, though, Roosevelt was unalarmed.  He sensed that the protest movements were off in their timing, at least as far as elections were concerned.  He viewed Townsend, Coughlin and Long as a “free side-show” that would run its course, having flared up in 1935. 

“Public psychology, he said, ‘cannot, because of human weakness, be attuned for long periods of time to a constant repetition of the highest note in the scale… There is another thought which is involved in continuous leadership,’ the President went on. 

People ‘tire of seeing the same name day after day in the important headlines of the papers, and the same voice night after night over the radio.  For example, if since last November I had tried to keep up the pace of 1933 and 1934, the inevitable histrionics of the new actors, Long and Coughlin and Johnson, would have turned the eyes of the audience away from the main drama itself!’  But Roosevelt agreed that the time would come for a ‘new stimulation of united American action,’ and he would be ready."

About that "Obama fatigue"... it's about time the man went on a vacation, right?

As MJ Rosenberg said the other day, McCain is faring well in the polls precisely because he couldn't get any media attention.  If he had, people would have noticed his colossal flubs and doubted his competence.  Let's let Mac have some acreage on the magazine covers, and give people a breather from nonstop Obama.  That seems to be Barack's strategy, and FDR would approve.

(Source: James M. Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, 214)

Cross-posted from my diary at Daily Kos with trepidation -- cutting and pasting with no Preview (upgrade blogging software, anyone?)

Today, August 8, is the day Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency of the United States in 1974 to avoid impeachment and conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors.  Today is the day that Holy Joe Lieberman was driven from the Democratic Party.

Today is also the day the Strangebedfellows Moneybomb is set to go off.  Back in June-July when the FISA fight was roiling, pissed-off civil libertarians raised over $300,000 to run ads targeting Democrats such as Steny Hoyer who colluded with Congressional Republicans, the White House, and the telecoms to pass the corrupt and dangerous 2008 "FISA Amendments Act."  The Strangebedfellows aim to continue and broaden that campaign, and they need our help.

The Strangebedfellows are a left-right coalition of civil-liberties-minded activists and bloggers, including Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald at Salon, and Rick Williams and Trevor Lyman of BreakTheMatrix.  Those are the founding members as far as I know.  The full list of supporters from the blogosphere is here.

Rick Williams and Trevor Lyman organized the Ron Paul moneybombs at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, one of which raised over $6 million in one day.  The goal of the moneybomb, which goes to AccountabilityNowPAC, is as follows:

The AccountabilityNowPAC was originally formed by our leftist Strangebedfellow members as a fundraising vehicle to block a Congressional leadership "compromise" on the corrupt FISA reauthorization bill now pending in the Senate. Over $300,000 has already been raised by the PAC, but we can do so much better than that! The goal of AccountabilityNowPAC is to become a permanent entity on the Washington DC political landscape which will let our politicians know that civil liberties MATTER. Our message to politicians in Washington is loud and clear: uphold constitutional rights and we will support you; abridge freedom in America and we will not be on your side. Democrat or Republican—it makes no difference to us. Our standard will be the same for all, so let’s end the surveillance insanity and take our country back.

Greenwald has an extensive post up detailing the rationale and goals for the campaign here.   In the post he describes the current situation in Washington thus:  

Thirty-four years ago today, Richard Nixon was forced from office as a result of mounting public anger, which in turn fueled the bipartisan intent of Congress to impeach him, due to his involvement in the relatively minor Watergate crimes. Accountability of that sort for our highest political leaders is today inconceivable.

Rather than investigate and punish violations of the Constitution and other laws, our political class conceals those crimes for as long as it can, endorses them when they are disclosed, and then acts to protect the lawbreakers. Public opinion is steadfastly ignored, rendered virtually irrelevant. Congress has deliberately made itself completely impotent, while the sprawling Executive enjoys virtual omnipotence and freedom from any real accountability. Laws are written not just for, but literally by, the largest corporations and their lobbyists -- even including, as we recently witnessed, laws that have no purpose other than to immunize them from consequences when they are caught deliberately breaking our laws.

And on why getting a good start to this campaign is so important:

A successful start is absolutely vital for ensuring that this new organization's arrival is loud, aggressive, and taken very seriously. Funding is the only currency the political establishment recognizes as an indicator of strength. The more successful this kick-off campaign is, the more news it will generate, the louder the message will be heard, the more damage can be done between now and November, and beyond, to its deserving targets (and, therefore, the more constructive the progress that can be achieved). The magnitude of today's Money Bomb will determine what the reach and impact of our campaign will be between now and the election.

If you are one of the more than 3,300 people who have already pledged to donate to the Money Bomb, today is the day to donate, here. If you haven't yet pledged, all details of the campaign are here. Regardless of whether you've previously pledged or not, you are able, and encouraged, to donate today. Chronicling the fundamental corruption and serial outrages of our political class is one step. Creating and executing strategies for battling them, altering public debates, and changing behavior is the next.

Please kick in whatever you can.  Help raise $500,000 -- or more.  Sleep better tonight.  Madison, Jefferson and Washington thank you.

Why can't politicians stay faithful to their wives?

John Edwards admission today of an extramarital affair reminds me just how frequent this issue seems to come up. I am all together uncertain why infidelity is taken so lightly by the leadership of this country when it is often used as a touchstone for a politician's character. The parade of wives and husbands is always a political necessity in front of those adoring supporters, yet they seem to be cast aside all to easily.

So today, John Edwards admits to having a loveless affair with a filmmaker but denies that he is her newborn baby's father. Regardless of paternity the question is why the infidelity? And on an ailing wife.

Oddly this is a bi-partisan issue.

John McCain cheated on his wheel chair bound first wife Carol Shepp after returning from his time as a POW in the 1970's. It is during this time that he and Carol split ways, with marrying his current wife, Cindy Lou Hensley just one month after the divorce from Carol was final.

Of course having a wife that is ill is not a pre-requisite for political infidelity. We all remember the well publicized Monica Lewinsky affair with then sitting President Bill Clinton - apparently one of many affairs he had during his marriage to Hillary Clinton. Regardless of how many Bill Clinton's infedility comes with a double penalty. As a young man he was a member of DeMolay, a Masonic youth organization created in the early 1900's to keep kids off the streets and I suppose prep for future Masons. One of the basic tennets of DeMolay (of which I was also a member) is fidelity, with a great deal of focus on respecting women. I remember feeling a sense of sadness when I learned that one of the most successful members of DeMolay had cheated on his wife. After all, DeMolay was all too ready to mention Bill Clinton (and Walt Disney) when they were soliciting my membership.

And we all know the Kennedy story and there are others I'm sure. And we seem oddly okay with their cheating, as if it's part of the job description, but isn't their job entirely based on taking oaths? We have faith that their word is good, yet their word to their wives, that doesn't matter? And how they so vehemently deny it is, in this YouTube Age, laughable and usually a great mistake.

But it is not okay.

We seem to be convinced that it is just fine for a politician to lie, make false promises and cheat on their spouses. We never act all that surprised when we find out - and almost expect it of them. How is that a good thing? Why is it acceptable for our leadership to be untruthful? Shouldn't we hold them to a higher standard?

Now infedility does not mean they are bad at their day job, it just calls into question their honesty, which calls into question their qualifications for keeping their day job.

It is so utterly dissapointing.

Okay. Edwards' political career is over. Of course he was not actually in office and was no longer actually running for anything.
 
But John McCain's political career started with his adultry!

He was still married to Carol, the wife who stuck with him when he was a POW, who was raising his children. She was in a car accident and partially disabled and had gained weight.

So he had an affair. With Cindy. While still married to Carol. Eventually he married into Cindy's money, into her connections, and into the state of Arizona... and the rest is history.

Of course McCain is actually in office and running for higher office.

I wonder if John McCain's adultry will be mentioned in the news today or over the next few days...?

In a recent appearance Obama told a 7 year old girl that "America is no longer what it could be, what it once was". We can expect  Obama to announce the death of Santa Claus to the children at his next event if he can figure out a way to blame it on GWB. Maybe Obama, the man who insists he loves this country (despite his dinner parties with terrorists, despite his mentor's obvious hatred of this country,  despite his wife admitting she was never proud of this country),  should explain exactly WHEN this country WAS what it could be in his opinion. Was it prior to 1865, when Blacks were slaves, and officially regarded as property by the Supreme Court? Was it back before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote? Was it under FDR's presidency, when we interned our Japanese American citizens? Or did the sun rise and set on the American empire during the Clinton years? Obama needs to study history and realize that there are both good and bad things from every age. To focus only on the bad distorts the true picture, which is an America with some shortcomings that are outnumbered by it's achievements. It is now and always was a country to be proud of, regardless of what he and his wife think.

Can we ever move on from the past or is this nation doomed to tread water and let the future sail away beyond the horizon?   This week Hillary Clinton stepped out of the shadows to reclaim the media spot light when some of her supporters began to push for Hillary’s nomination. Hillary, for her part, has played all sides of the  issue, one day saying all options are still viable and a catharsis was needed and the next day saying she’s 100% behind Barack. A few weeks ago her campaign swore off any notion of her being nominated, bu t doubts have been raised this week, mainly thanks to the media salivating over a possible Round 2 in the Barack vs Hillary poli-match.   I’m sure her supporters are also quite excited to have even the vaguest chance of an upset…but…   … I'm also not sure why her supporters don't want to respect the rules of the DNC.   There’s murmurings that they want those disputed Florida and Michigan delegates seated and if so, then maybe Hillary pulls a win somehow. This whole Michigan and Florida nonsense is well...nonsense. They broke the rules, Clinton maneuvered herself&nb sp; to benefit and broke her own word about honoring the DNC's decision. A pattern of convenience that seems to be re-emerging.   It's bad enough McCain is using Hillary's own words against Obama and probably scoring some points with her supporters - now she has to play coy? If for some odd reason there is some dramatic reversal at the convention there will be no more Democratic party. There will be a split. The fall race will be a three person race and Obama will still win.   And Hillary's career will be over , and she won’t be alone in the unemployment line.   Or at least that's the doomsday scenario. Only the convention will let us know what will really happen.   I just hope Hillary supporters understand that this has nothing to do with gender and there are plenty of other qualified women who SHOULD have run.   Hillary Clinton is just not qualified to run this nation based on how she ran her campaign and based on her behavior during it, let alone her checkered past filled with resentments and controversies.   Clinton insulted foreign leaders, fanning the flames of our enemy (calling Putin soul-less does not help), she refused to disavow and in fact seemed to support the rumors falsely being spread about Obama, she exaggerated her stories and experience calling into question her veracity of character. Not to mention she's in debt up to her head after having run a negative campaign both in tone and in finance.   Pelosi, Rice and a whole host of other women deserve it more and would do it better - despite any of their own mistakes. (although Pelosi lately has been rather feisty and less then helpful)   The point is, anytime the Clinton’s materialize this cloud of resentment and anger follows them like some Peanuts cartoon. They’re angry. Yes. We get it. Bill is upset with how George has ruined the country and Hillary seems to think she was supposed to be the first female president. I get it. They miss the 90’s. I get it!   But I don’t miss those roaring 90’s.   The 90’s folks were not so great for a great many of us. Yes the economy was booming, but that had little to nothing to do with Bill Clinton and everything to do with the natural progression of technology. The internet boom in the late 90’s propelled our economy through the roof, only, as we all saw, it was a temporary boost . (as with all new things)   But we also ignored Al Queda’s growth in the 1990’s, not taking it seriously. There was the first World Trade Center Bombing, a warning sign we ignored. We entered Bosnia far too late and didn’t finish with Saddam (why was there no trial for him back then?). And let’s not get into Somalia.   The point is –it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. We were drifting. Wading in a sea of potential, but the wind had died down, distracted by the nonsense of the Lewinsky affair and the impeachment that followed.   I was speaking with an Obama supporter recently and they were expressing to me how much work it’s been these past few weeks to get the Clinton supporters to back Barack and prepare for the convention. The frustration I felt from this Obama supporter was not one of anger or negativity, but of sadness. A sadness that comes from seeing a potential great shift in the U.S. slipping away – allowing the dream of once again being the land of promise and opportunity fade into the morning mist.   Let’s hope the lantern stays lit and we can find our way safely back to the shore and return to rebuilding this nation into the example it once was.

I'm going to be upfront before I begin this: this is going to be hard for me to write. As a young woman who went through all the typical traumas and dramas of growing up in America, I, like many women, have seen and experienced violence against women. I'll be the first one to admit that the topic of rape is an emotionally charged one, a subject that lends itself to flying off the handle, irate reactions and, sometimes, even tears. Let me also preface this with the admission that I am not exempt from this.

But I still was not prepared for the backlash of misogynistic comments on my blog from Wednesday, entitled “1 in 3 Military Women Raped, and Apparently the Pentagon Doesn't Think It's A Problem.” The purpose of my blog was to call attention to both the alarming rate of reported sexual assault among women in the military, and, more importantly, the fact that the Pentagon was tasked with the assignment to name a task force on the issue of rape in the military, and after 4 years, has yet to do so. It was in no way, shape or form, intended to blame the troops for this alarming problem, or to accuse male soldiers of being rapists.

Most of the comments were positive, expressing the normal reaction of alarm to the high rate of reported rape, as well as outrage at the Pentagon's inaction. But then there were some anomalies:

“I served two tours in the US army and can safely say that this is utter and complete BS.”

“They're armed. And more independent-minded. And trained. And confident. I wouldn't expect that rates would be higher than in the general population for these reasons.”

“1 out of 3 is pure propaganda. Pls don't swallow.”

“This can mean anything from a giving someone a hug and the woman not liking you to rape. God help the ugly guys, I am sure their sexual assault charges are much higher then they should be.”

“Of course, [her] pathetic methodology does even take into account false claims and has uses a loose definition of 'date rape' I am sure.”

Shame on me for assuming that the atrocity of rape is universally understood, and that to publicly infer that we all should be suspicious of women who allege rape would be considered taboo in this day in age. I understand that the statistic of 1 in 3 women reporting having been sexually assaulted while in the military is daunting and unbelievable to some. It's shocking, it's outrageous, but it is in no way made up.

It is precisely the kind of attitude that would assume that it's a common practice for women to falsely allege rape, or the attitude that any statistic that seems outrageous either must be false or can be rationalized away, that has allowed the Pentagon to stay inactive on this issue. And, although the comments have me sidetracked, the fact that in the 4 years since Congress mandated a task force on rape in the military, the Pentagon has yet to do it, that's the real outrage here.

The rates are alarming and the Pentagon has yet to act. They've ignored a congressional mandate. This issue deserves some investigation. We have enough factors endangering our troops as it is, and they don't need another one that could potentially be prevented or treated with better sensitivity, if the Pentagon would have the will to do so. That's why it's important that we get support for this petition, urging the Pentagon's point person on sexual assault in the military to do what was mandated: name the task force and call it to order.

Josh Green of the Atlantic Monthly has received some 200 internal memos that were leaked from someone in Clinton's campaign.  Apparently they are from high level advisors like Mark Penn and members of her staff are worried.  It's being reported that 130 of these memos will be published online early next week.  There is a brief post on Huffinton post about this and another on The Washinton Monthly.  The various items I've seen about it all reference a paragraph taken from a  voices.washingtonpost.com post that is unavailable currently.  Here's the paragraph:

Of particular concern are nearly 200 internal memos that the author, Josh Green, obtained — 130 or so of which he plans to scan in and post online. When the piece is published sometime next week, readers will be able to scroll through the memos, from senior strategists such as Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Geoff Garin, and see what exactly was going on inside the infamously fractured Clinton organization. That has some former team members in a panic.

Looks like someone from her campaign has an axe to grind.  Should be some interesting reading!

How McCain threw Ohio workers under his bus - Los Angeles Times

DHL Deal Gone Sour Haunts McCain in Ohio
The firm may close its hub, imperiling nine county economies. A campaign aide lobbied for its parent company.

Wilmington, Ohio - Finally given a chance to address Sen. John McCain, Mary Houghtaling choked up Thursday and began to cry.

John McCain never had to work. His childhood home is now the Republicans' swanky club on Capitol Hill. He married a rich heiress as soon as he could dump his first wife. He travels to his 10 homes on his private jet.
It will take more than photo ops in front of supermarket cheese for McCain to understand the economic insecurity so many working families face.
His Senate record is one of unblemished attacks on American workers. He wants to allow strike replacement workers, to privatize Social Security, to tax health benefits and to give tax breaks to corporations that offshore jobs.
He embraced George Bush's economic policies, which led to the worst job creation since Herbert Hoover and more income inequality than during the Great Depression.
McCain is utterly clueless about the economy. Two years ago he said he was looking forward to Ben Bernanke's confirmation hearings as Fed Chairman -- well after the hearings concluded and the day before he was confirmed. 
John McCain is as likely to show bold leadership on the economy as Robert Mugabe is to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
 

John McCain never had to work. His childhood home is now the Republicans' swanky club on Capitol Hill. He married a rich heiress as soon as he could dump his first wife. He travels to his 10 homes on his private jet.
It will take more than photo ops in front of supermarket cheese for McCain to understand the economic insecurity so many working families face.
His Senate record is one of unblemished attacks on American workers. He wants to allow strike replacement workers, to privatize Social Security, to tax health benefits and to give tax breaks to corporations that offshore jobs.
He embraced George Bush's economic policies, which led to the worst job creation since Herbert Hoover and more income inequality than during the Great Depression.
McCain is utterly clueless about the economy. Two years ago he said he was looking forward to Ben Bernanke's confirmation hearings as Fed Chairman -- well after the hearings concluded and the day before he was confirmed. 
John McCain is as likely to show bold leadership on the economy as Robert Mugabe is to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
 

Barack Obama has a message problem. If he doesn't fix his message soon, he will lose the battle to define himself, his opponent and the election itself. Such a loss would cost him the White House.

With the release Friday of John McCain's newest attack ad "Painful" — the fifth negative spot out of his last six — McCain is laying the foundation of his fall campaign strategy. His new ad connects multiple themes, from celebrity to elitism to liberal disdain for everyday Americans. Onto this foundation, McCain can attach any and every negative meme about Obama: from arugula to guns and religion, from Rev. Wright to higher taxes, from "uppity" ambition to sacrificing victory in Iraq for victory in the election.

Life in the spotlight must be grand, but for the rest of us, times are tough. Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000. He promises more taxes on small business, seniors, your life savings, your family. Painful taxes, hard choices for your budget, not ready to lead. That's the real Obama.

Virtually any sound bite or footage can be made to fit McCain's emergent framing of Obama. Sadly, the more outrageous McCain's ads get, the more they penetrate public consciousness through cable news stories. The Pew Center's latest study reports that McCain has now pulled even with Obama in news coverage. All of which is why McCain's foundation of distortion must be demolished now, before it settles deeper into the American psyche and become permanent.

Here's what Obama can and must do:

Obama's message needs to scrupulously avoid repeating McCain's rhetoric. Far too often, Obama himself is the one repeating it. Just hours ago, the Illinois senator needlessly reinforced one negative meme about himself, saying he wouldn't throw his loyalty to the Chicago White Sox "under the bus" just because he was speaking elsewhere.

Obama should step up his offensive game in stump speeches and ads. Half of all voters say they're tired of hearing about Obama. Could it be because Obama rarely focuses his rhetoric on McCain but McCain focuses virtually all his rhetoric on Obama? The celebrity elitist charge must be answered forcefully and with finality by shining the spotlight on McCain's more pronounced celebrity elitism. It won't be cost-free, but it will blunt McCain's attacks and pave the way for the next stage in Obama's message.

Obama needs to take a sledge hammer to McCain's pedestal of honorability and integrity. If he can't bring McCain down from that pedestal, he can't successfully assail McCain on presidential readiness, mental acuity or a host of other issues. Not without being seen as badly disrespectful. Taking on McCain's honor and integrity doesn't mean depicting McCain as a Manchurian candidate or even touching his military service. McCain's flip-flops, conduct of the campaign and involvement in the Keating Five and coziness with lobbyists is enough. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, is now known to have lobbied McCain for approval of Airborne Express's sale to foreign-owned DHL, with the loss of 30,000 Ohio jobs now looming.

Obama must have a lock on populism. Discredit and destroy the charge that he would raise taxes on families, seniors and working people. Contrast his plans with John McCain's. Show people who really cares for average Americans.

If Obama fails to respond, frame and focus the debate on his opponent, McCain will contrive a referendum on Obama. And Obama, against all odds, will lose.

Former NC Sen. John Edwards admits to ABC's Bob Woodruff that he did have an affair with novice filmmaker Rielle Hunter, but says he is not the father of her baby.

Is this the end of the political road for Edwards?

A lot of consternation today regarding the continuing "celebrity" attacks going on against Obama. Not sure why this isn't more self-evident, but my take on how to respond is by fighting fire with fire. Obama is the elitist celeb, huh? Well if McCain is angry about that, it is only because McCain is getting his milkshake drank on this. He's been a Media Darling all his life. How many appearances on SNL? No one has been on the Daily Show more than he has. And I bet the Meet the Press numbers are very high too - it seemed he was on every other week in 2006-2007.

McCain is the original Media Darling. Everytime "Celebrity" comes out of <i>their</i> mouths, "Media Darling" should be the response. You fight fire with fire.

Sometime around February, I became an Obama supporter.  And by that I mean that I decided to take him at his word and seriously consider the implications of doing politics HIS way.  Mind you, I am used to being on the losing end of presidential politics but I am not resigned to it by any means.  I spent so much energy in a rage over George Bush and the war in Iraq that I think that rage is partially responsible for the terminal cancer I have developed.  Being angry for a very long time KILLS a person.  And I was angry.  I wanted a Presidential candidate who would be an avenging angel, who would smite the godless republicans, who would punish them for their evil deeds, who would fearlessly force them to back down like the pack of snarling dogs they are.

But then, my teenage son, an Obama supporter since early 2007, started to seriously talk with me about politics and he opened my eyes to a few things. 

1.  He, and many other first time voters his age are truly sick and tired of the rage and the passion and the futility of what passes for politics in this country.  He did not then, and does not now, see Obama's refusal to play tit for tat as a sign of weakness.  Where many people see John McCain hitting and Obama not hitting back, others see Obama not getting all caught up in the bullshit, not losing focus, not playing the same tired game, the same tired way.  And they are refreshed and renewed.

2.  The current Obama coalition includes many people like me who are still hurt, and still angry, and still itching for a fight.  Unless we can get over ourselves, Obama is going to break our hearts.

3.  My son, a man of a mere 18 years, once asked me to choose what matters to me more, kicking Republican ass or solving problems?  And if fixing the country means NOT kicking ass or taking names, would I be willing to do that?

And you know what?  This year, I am not listening to the pundits or even my fellow bloggers all that much.  I am listening mostly to eighteen and nineteen year olds who just want to cut the crap and finally see something get accomplished in politics.  Because I am beginning to understand that they are wiser than I am.  And their wisdom comes from looking into tough future we parents have created for them with our heedlessness and our stupid culture wars and our tolerance for the trivial in public life.  They know that living with the consequences of OUR actions is going to be pretty tough and they are hoping that someone calm, cool, and seemingly unflappable like Barack Obama, someone who tells them it isn't too late to fix what WE broke will lead in a positive direction.  And if he doesn't lead, he may at least get the hell out of the way and let THEM lead.

Two weeks ago, I stopped treatments and entered a hospice program.  I am a testimony to the fact that stress and anger can kill a person.  But if  I can do only one important thing before I'm out of here permanently, I am going to live long enough to cast my vote for Barack Obama.  I'm leaving my vote as an offering of atonement to my kids and as a gift of my hope for the future.  Hope is all I have LEFT of the future.

And to answer my son's question, the answer is yes.  If the only way to end this god forsaken war in Iraq, the only way to get universal health care, the only way to fully fund education for every child from K - B.A. is to forgive every Republican sin, then I will gladly do it.  I would kiss Dick Cheney on the mouth if it would get the troops home from Iraq even one day sooner.  And if any of you can honestly say you wouldn't, then you are every bit as full of shit as most people under the age of 25 think you are.

If anybody needs to change, it isn't Barack Obama.  It's the rest of us.  We need to stop being distracted by things that just don't matter and FOCUS on what we want, rather than what we don't want.

That is the end my rant for today.  Thanks for reading.

Have a look.  

If we had a contest to pick the blogger who is supporting Obama for the most trivial reason, I'd probably win hands down.

As any of you who watch Bill O'Reilly know, he has an obsession with the young singer, Miley Cyrus.  He's done a couple of segments on her, including one I happened to see after her Vanity Fair photo shoot.

In the segment, O'Reilly interviews some ex-child star to get his take on the photo shoot, foists his own view of morality on his viewers, then ends the segment by suggesting that Miley Cyrus go on TV (on his show preferably) to "explain" herself to her fans.

While I'm watching this and wondering who the hell this guy thinks he is, I realize my daughter, stopped in her tracks by the pic of Miley Cyrus on the screen, is watching O'Reilly over my shoulder.  And when the segment is over, she asks:  "You think I should wear my Hanna Montana t-shirt anymore?"

At that moment, I decided a couple of things.  The first was I don't want pompous, moralizing asses like the O'Reillys of this world anywhere near my kid's government anymore. 

The second?  Well, if you see an old guy at the mall, wearing a Hanna Montana t-shirt and handing out Obama campaign lit, come on over and say hello.

Good question

War in the Caucasus?
By Anatol Lieven, New America Foundation
Newsweek International | October 16, 2006

I am so sick of Barack being the person classified by the media as the "Elitists" by the so-called "Liberal Media".

Lets see.  The McCain Campaign goads Barack Obama into going overseas and the trip is a huge success.

So what does the media say about Obama?  The media corp(se) gets all over Barack Obama for being an "arrogant", “uppity”, “pompous”, “a fancy bearing, tea drinking, celebrity” candidate according to the media, along with every other word to describe Obama as the “Elitists” Candidate"!

Those adjectives aren't mine.  These words from the "Liberal" Media.  Wasn't it McCain who wanted to prove that Obama couldn't deal with Foreign Policy / Leaders and Obama blew him away with his success?

And excuse me but what about “Elitists” McCain, who has Eight Houses, doesn’t bother to pay his house taxes on one of them for Four Years, buys $500 Shoes, dumps his hurt wife for a Multi-Millionaire Wife - while he was still married - flies around in her Private Lear Jet – and then makes a speech titled "President McCain in 2013", detailing everything he had accomplished as President by 2013?

     Dick Move of the Week - McCain Attacks

Hey Johnny Boy, the election hasn't been held yet.  But that's OK because the media thinks you are Joe Average and doesn't say you are "Arrogant", Pompous" or "An Elitists" for saying you think you have already been elected!!

Oh and, when was the last time that any reader of this lived in a town that allowed YOU to avoid paying your HOUSE TAXES - not for just one year - but for FOUR YEARS?

But remember, folks.  None of this is "Elitists", "Arrogant" or "Pompous", about McCain; according to the media!

How much of this video has been reported - - Over and over again?   None of it!  How much of this would you be seeing in an endless loop, if Obama didn't pay HIS house taxes for FOUR Straight Years?

How can we forget all the media being over McCain's house around Memorial Day in his backyard for a BBQ, not to mention the time when the AP got McCain those doughnuts before the "tough questions"!   Remember that?  Where was the press, with their "enlesss loop", of showing us THEIR reporters that call Obama "elite", being in McCain's back pocket, eating his BBQ ribs?

     No news, just ribs at McCain barbecue

     AP writer rips Obama, gives McCain doughnuts (true story)

Gee, I wonder if the AP's Ron Fournier bought the doughnuts.

     The AP’s Fournier considered role with McCain campaign

Then we have this Jed Report video, showing how McCain’s campaign, back on June 27th, was the one that put Obama’s picture on Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and a One Hundred Dollar Bill.  Yet McCain (and the media) claims that "it is Obama who thinks he is so Presidential that he should be on our currency".  Too bad Brokaw couldn’t find this ad before the last MTP show.

Again, how many times have you seen this ad - with the date it was created shown - run endlessly on CNN, MSNBC, FAUX, ABC, CBS and NBC News?  You haven't!!

Has the media corrected this fact riddled ad yet and the fact that IT is the ad that started the "Race Card" talk?  No!!

     Setting The Record Straight (Note the Date of The Ad)

And lets not forget how many times the media slammed Obama for not wearing a Flag Lapel Pin?  Remember all those "important" primary questions?  If it was SO important, why don’t these same media correspondents wear THEIR Flag Lapel Pins?

     Flag Pins: Who Wears 'Em?

What Hypocrites!  But lets not forget folks, we are surrounded by “That Liberal Media” that just love to keep telling us all those “DNC” Talking Points!  Yeah, right!

"LIBERAL Media"?  WHAT Liberal Media?

And who is the REAL “Elitists”?

Hillary Clinton’s Supporters Push For Her Nomination

Hillary Clinton’s Supporters Push For Her Nomination

I am no fan of Russia's government, but I am a fan of timelines: Georgia pulled a sneak attack against South Ossetia this morning and in doing so killed  a handful of Russian Peacekeeping troops - troops that were stationed there in an agreement between Georgia, South Ossetia, and Russia.

History: South Ossetia declared independence from Georgia in 1992, the people of South Ossetia overwhelmingly support this independence, and most South Ossetians are citizens of Russia. However, this independence is not recognized by the international community, in spite of the fact that in 2006 South Ossetians overwhelmingly voted for independence.

Once again, I am no fan of Russia's government; Putin is a dictator. But this is a dishonorable move by Georgia that was - by their own admission - designed to coincide with the start of the Olympic games. By the time people begin to watch coverage of this, they will likely believe Georgia's claim that "Russia is invading us" - hell, it's technically true.

Meanwhile, CNN's former headline that "Russia denounces Georgia Offensive" now links to "Georgia 'Under Attack' as Russian tanks roll in."

Now, we know what McCain's response to this will be.... and Obama will most likely be forced to parrot him in spite of the fact that Georgia's actions are immoral because the vast majority of Americans will believe by tomorrow that Russia attacked Georgia. Meanwhile, those on the left will decry Georgia and mainstream America will be subtly reminded that us lefties are American-hating Russian-loving anti-war communists.

Anyone think Georgia's move was sanctioned by the U.S. behind the scenes?

From Greg Sargent at Election Central:

The McCain campaign triples-down on its "celeb" sneer, releasing a third ad on the topic that hits the theme even harder than the last two...Clearly, the McCain camp thinks this is working, and they're going to keep hammering away at it for weeks, if not months.

But is it working? The "experts" weigh in at WaPo. Predictably, the conservatives congratulate McCain on a successful ad; the liberals express mild concern or shrug their shoulders.

ED ROGERS, former deputy assistant to President Bush
John McCain's celebrity ad was effective...Questions about Obama's desire for celebrity status will linger.

CARTER ESKEW, chief strategist for Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign
A casual attempt this week to flick McCain's charges off his shoulder dragged Obama into a silly and distracting discussion of race. The ghosts of losers past must haunt his team -- will Obama be Swift-boated if he doesn't strike back hard?

BENJAMIN GINSBERG, veteran of three Republican presidential campaigns
Over the next 12 weeks, the McCain campaign needs to reinforce its message, making certain that voters retain the image of Paris-Britney-Obama in one vacuous celebrity breath.

WILLIAM A. GALSTON, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
The Obama campaign needs to think harder about how to respond.

EDWARD J. ROLLINS, head of Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign and Mike Huckabee's campaign chairman this year
An ad man's dream.

TAD DEVINE, principal consultant to Al Gore in 2000
Will they work? Perhaps. But I believe that Obama will prove to be a more elusive target than previous Democratic nominees, stretching back to George McGovern, who were subjected to the Republican attack machine.

RALPH REED, Southeast Region Chairman for the George W. Bush campaign in 2004
Obama's celebrity has spawned a kind of modern-day Beatlemania, complete fainting fans, Men's Vogue cover shoots, swooning politicians and an admiring press corps. But with the celebrity ad, McCain has now officially taken that strength and turned it into a weakness.

JAMAL SIMMONS, press secretary to Bob Graham's and Wesley Clark's presidential campaigns
While the Republican's strategists must believe that these negative attacks will take a toll on Obama, the greater danger is for McCain, who is proving the Democrats' point: John McCain is a maverick no more.

Certainly, the ads are effective in the sense that they've attracted significant media attention. But will the charge itself stick? During the primary, Hillary Clinton and Republicans floated a number of caricatures of Obama:
- inexperienced
- elitist
- naive
- unpatriotic
- empty suit
- plagiarizer
- tainted by associates
- brass-knuckled politician

Most of these caricatures failed to take hold. Judging by anecdotal experience, I suggest that the elitist and inexperienced/naive attacks were the most effective and still dog Obama. Other attacks, such as Obama's association with Ayers/Wright/Rezko or his alleged plagiarism, have all but disappeared from the campaign narrative.

And the celebrity charge? Many people who call it effective allude to Obama's perceived elitism. The elitisim charges have been effective because Obama is, to an extent, elitist--in his education, in his tastes, and in his rhetorical style. But celebrity is not elitism. In the age of American Idol, celebrities are often quite plebian: undereducated, unintelligent, crass. Britney Spears, in particular, is often criticized for lacking class and derided for her "trailer trash" ways.

Moreover, despite the media attention he receives, Obama does not seem to love the spotlight. He seems a tad uncomfortable with the adoration and is protective of his personal life, in contrast with Spears and Hilton, who seem to relish in their exposure. The charge of celebrity fits much better with Obama's predecessor, Bill Clinton, who enjoys the spotlight and engages in tabloid exploits. Clinton is less of an elitist than Obama but more of a celebrity. I also note that Americans did not seem to begrudge Bill his celebrity.

For these reasons, I predict that while the celebrity charges have a enjoyed a solid summer week of media stardom, they will soon exit stage right.

I think it would be so simple and so easy for Obama to respond to the elitist/celebrity smear McCain is launching. It would go something like:

Obama wants to raise taxes only for those making 250k or more per year.
McCain says Obama wants to raise taxes on the middle class.
Is 250k per year really middle class?
If you are a millionaire who owns your own jet, perhaps in your world it is.
As for the rest of us, 250k is not middle class.
McCain: when he think he fights for the middle class, he really fights for his millionaire friends in Washington.

Today were told about yet another setup for the media by Senator John McCain's campaign.  TIMES is reporting the following:

"It's not easy to make the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential campaign seem benign. But suggesting that Barack Obama is the Antichrist might just do it."

That's just what some outraged Christian supporters of the Democratic nominee are claiming John McCain's campaign did in an ad called "The One" that was recently released online. The Republican nominee's advisers brush off the charges, arguing that the spot was meant to be a "creative" and "humorous" way of poking fun at Obama's popularity by painting him as a self-appointed messiah. But even this innocuous interpretation of the ad — which includes images of Charlton Heston as Moses and culled clips that make Obama sound truly egomaniacal — taps into a conversation that has been gaining urgency on Christian radio, political blogs, and in widely-circulated email messages that accuse Obama of being the Antichrist.

Yesterday I wrote about the so-called 'leaked' memo from the McCain camp:

HuffingtonPost.com is reporting a LEAKED MEMO from McCain's camp saying the following:

    McCain campaign "Economic Communications Plan" that was obtained by the:

Huffington Post, an aide to the Senator lays out several themes, tactics and objectives to shore up the Arizona Republican's standing on the economy and paint Barack Obama as a "job killing machine."

All this report does is give John McCain FREE advertising with talking points of Barack Obama as a JOB KILLING MACHINE!

I can hear the political pundits, CNN and FOX now...Breaking News....McCain's pointing out that Obama is a Job Killing Machine.....!

Thanks HuffingtonPost for helping McCain - and taking the bait.

Well, it appears that TIMES is now swallowing the BAIT put in the water to the media for FREE campaign ads.

Why is it that the media only swallows McCain's camp's talking points?  There have been stories galor out there about McCain but not one do you see printed or reported on TV.

Apparently Obama doesn't have the media in his pocket after all.

Do you enjoy a good mystery?  I was just doing a book signing in a quaint little New England town, and a scraggly old scientist turned up dead!  Everyone said it was a suicide, but I began asking around.  Let me tell you, for a quaint litte New England town, everyone is acting very suspiciously.  Especially that George fellow-- I know he's from Connecticut, but speaks with a fake Texas accent.  Forgive me, that was rude, but you have to admit, it's suspicious indeed!  I don't trust the detectives here either (they're a little too big for their britches, if you don't mind me saying).

And so, I'm writing to you with my trusty typewriter, because I need your help!  There's a nice lawyer from New York who's helping me on this case.  (Like all those New York lawyers, he's a bit pricey, but it's the only chance we've got!)  I just gave him the last $100 I had in my purse-- can you help me solve this mystery?

A year ago:

Is he black enough?

10 months ago:

Is he too black??

8 months ago:

Is he Christian enough?

6 months ago:

Is he too Christian??

2 months ago:

Is he presidential?

Now:

Is he too presidential??










psa.blastmagazine.com

The Election 2008 campaign ads are being shown during the Olympics this coming week.

One video degrades a man’s character, a man’s hard fought campaign against all odds and pushes fear of terror and high taxes, the other video pushes the feeling of hope by showing how new jobs can be created and in the process, fix our nation in the very near future.

It depends on your human nature which video grabs your attention; but one would think that most Americans, after 8 long years of death, tragedy, war, lack of jobs, high energy prices and being told to ‘fear’ their neighbor, would finally be ready to look the other direction….toward the future with the audacity of hope.

Hi.  Come on in.  Close the door behind you, please.  Thanks.  Did you find the office okay?  Wonderful.  Have a seat.  No, not there.  On the large, padded day bed over there.  Sure, you can lay down if you want. 

Comfortable?  Good.  Would you like a soda?  No?  Okay.  Well, let's talk.  What's bothering you?

You say you've been reading a lot of stuff on the Web about how Obama's losing the election.  How does that make you feel?

Whoa!  Okay, okay.  Here's a paper bag.  Put it over your mouth.  Inhale and exhale deeply into it until you calm down.

Feeling a little less panicky now?  Good.  So what's got you so jumpy?

Wait.  I'm a professional.  Let me guess.  You're not happy that Obama probably isn't picking Clinton as VP.  You don't like the fact that McCain puts out one negative ad after another, and Obama doesn't really seem to respond with the punch you'd like.  You're having flashbacks to 1988, 2000 and 2004.  You think Obama should be up by 20 in the national tracking polls, not 3 or 4.  You've been reading TPM, DailyKos and the like, and read all these blogs and posts screaming for Obama to change things up.

All of the above?  Hmmm.  This is worse than I thought.

I see cases like yours every four years, though you seem to be particularly afflicted.  I do believe you have a full-blown attack of DEAD.

No, I'm not saying you're dead!  It's an acronym.  DEAD stands for Democratic Election Anxiety Disorder.  As I said before, this happens every four years, during a Presidential election.  It's particularly bad between August and October. 

DEAD happens to overactive, intelligent Democratic brains that have unfortunately become conditioned to take every single Republican action or media declaration as a sign that the sky is falling.  That's why our journal also describes this as "Chicken Little" syndrome. 

There are many therapies for DEAD, but each has its drawbacks.  Electric shock treatments aren't covered under your insurance.  I could have you come visit me every week for a relaxing chat about electoral reality, but the price of gas is high, and so are my fees. 

So, I'm going to go with an experimental treatment.  This hasn't been tried much, but I've had great results with it.  Before we begin, though, I just need to you sign this waiver...good.

Okay.  Now, I need you to sit up straight.  Very good.  Now I'm just going to pull up a chair right in front of you, and sit down.  There.  We're all set.  Ready for your treatment?

WAKE UP!  OBAMA'S WINNING!

Excuse me, did I break your concentration?  I'm sorry about that.  Please, continue.  You were saying something about Axelrod's incompetence, Burton's milquetoast press responses, and Obama's wimpiness.  Oh - you're finished?  Well, allow me to retort!

National tracking polls?  National polls (most of which Obama has led in since June 3) do not matter.  Why?  Two words:  Electoral College.  A popular-vote margin is meaningless without the electoral vote. 

(OK, OK.  Sorry about causing the Gore flashback.  Here's the bag again.  Breathe...better now?  Good.)

Now, follow the electoral college projections.  Nate Silver, Pollster, ElectoralVote - even Karl Rove's - all have Obama winning in the neighborhood of 280-300 electoral votes.  Which means that McCain's not even holding the Bush electoral map from 2004 - and that, for all his lies and negativity, he is way, way behind.

I'm going to give you this card.  I'm almost out of them.  I had 500 printed up a few months ago.  Yes, there are a lot of people feeling the same anxiety, but many of them seem to be doing much better now. 

Let's read the card, to ourselves, together.  On the count of three, okay?  One...two...three.

Understand that the people running Obama's campaign (1) have been doing this a lot longer than you, (2) have more information than you, (3) are much better at gaming this out than you, and (4) clearly have a plan to win the general.  Just because you may not like the plan doesn't mean the plan isn't working.

What I want you do to is to read this card every time you feel a panic attack coming about the election, or you visualize John McCain's axe-murderer grin about to deliver his Inaugural Address. 

Then, immediately after reading the card, go do something to help Obama.  Talk to friends and family.  Go to your nearest campaign office.  Do canvassing.  Do phone banking.  Help plan or set up an Obama event.  Go to the local market and register voters.  Donate to the campaign or the DNC.  Do oppo research on McCain.  (Did you know that the Hess bundling story was originally caught by a TPM reader?)  Go campaign for a local House or Senate candidate. 

Do any of these things.  Do anything else you want.  Just don't sit around and panic.  And, I promise you this:  The more you work constructively, and the more people you talk to about this election, the more you will find that many people are tired of the same failed policies, the same "bait-and-bitch" politics, and the same economic misery. 

(Hell, I've even had to actually share my helicopter to my summer home in the Hamptons with another family because of fuel costs!  But don't tell anyone - I don't want them to think I'm struggling.)

Are you cured?  No.  You'll always have DEAD symptoms that occur whenever some Rove acolyte launches another negative attack.  It's an unfortunate consequence of being intelligent and free-thinking (another way to say "non-Republican"). 

But, if you read that card out loud, and then take one or more of the steps I've outlined for you, you'll find that you won't be DEAD.  You - and your candidate - will be very much alive...and celebrating in November.

Well, gee, that's really nice of you to say.  Oh, don't mention it.  Helping political junkies is what I do.  Don't forget, now - make sure you go do something positive every time you feel DEAD.  Take care.  Buh-bye!

"Which of the McCains' 8 [or 6, or 10] houses does he sit in when he devises ways to portray Obama as living the 'grand' life?" 

"... or do the thoughts come to him as he rides in his millionaire heiress wife's plane, or when he sits with the Washington lobbyists who run his campaign?"

" . . . and why the whinng about Barack Obama's popularity -- which McCain call's 'celebrity' -- from a politician who appeared in The Wedding Crashers and been on the Daily Show more than any other guest?"

"John McCain . . .  'maverick,' or 'hypocrite'?

An interview with far-right pundit Joe Ralston from Nevada. He tries the various attacks, which Obama does an impressive job of turning back on Joe. Worth checking out for the video and analysis by the Washington Independent.

I want to mention this wonderful, handy reference tool from Congressional Quarterly's CQ.com. If you click here, you'll go to the CQ.com Vote Studies Workbook.

After studying all roll call votes from the Bush 43 term up until the current summer recess, the study shows that the level of partisanship has run exceptionally high. Sure, that's not much of a surprise to anyone, but they have all the votes in a table along with a score for "presidential support" and another for "party unity." Seats that are particularly contentious in the upcoming election are also flagged. Anyway, it's an excellent resource for political junkies and wonks of all stripes.

In economic news, Fannie Mae reported a $2.3 billion loss for the second quarter - the fourth straight quarterly loss.(MORE)

He’s white, he’s black, he was inexperienced nationally, he’s a relatively unknown politician across America, his father was born Kenya, where he grew up herding goats, his mother grew up in Kansas.  Senator Barack Obama with the ‘audacity of hope’, challenged the great Democratic Party establishment and six of the most experience, powerful and well known politicians in Washington today (Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton), one of which was a very well known and popular white female New York Senator that also happens to be the wife of the ex-president of United States, Bill Clinton, that left office with a 60% approval rating.

Obama challenged his own party by saying we shouldn’t invade Iraq, he challenged the Senate to set a timeline for withdraw from Iraq, he said he would go after Bin Laden if Pakistan didn’t act (Bush now agrees), he said we should talk to our enemies (Bush is now doing that), he wants out of Iraq in 2010, news reports yesterday say the U.S. and Iraq have now agreed to a withdraw timetable of 2010.

Now Obama is challenging Republican Senator John McCain, who’s had 26 years experience in Washington, who used to be considered a maverick in his own party, a son and grandson of distinguished Navy admirals, a man with a 22 year career in the Navy and a war hero after being a POW.
 
Why you ask, would the media cover such a man?  Why is Barack Obama a ‘celebrity’ of sorts?  Duh!?

Senator John McCain ran for the Republican Party’s nominee for President and lost to George W. Bush back in 2000.  He was the media’s ‘darling’ and ‘celebrity’ back then.  They called his campaign the “straight talk express”, remember?  I don’t recall reading complaints made by columnists about all the attention McCain was getting back then, do you?

With all due respect to Senator John McCain, he’s old news because of his previous run for the office of president and his 26 years in Washington.  Voters know him well.

Comparing the news worthiness’ of Senator Obama to that of Senator McCain is like comparing apples and oranges – they each have their own measure of importance today.

Senator McCain knew what he was up against when he announced his candidacy.

When one candidate draws 120,000 (Berlin) viewers and the other is lucky to draw 1000 – which news would you report?

Almost as volatile as the "race" issue in this year's election is the issue of age. It is as equally impossible to ignore the reality of McCain's age as it is to ignore Obama's being black. The media and most pundits have tip-toed around this subject for months. I doubt that there is anyone out there who hasn't had a parent or grandparent, aunt or uncle who as they advanced into there seventies began to exhibit signs of diminishing mental ability. It's just a fact of life. It's not a stigma. It's not something you whisper about. It is something you become concerned about that's all.

We know now from various sources that when Ronald Reagan began his second term at the age of 73, he was beginning to show signs of early Alzheimer's. How this affected his ability to perform the duties of president and commander-in-chief we will never know as his wife and closest aides shielded him from public exposure. (An historical footnote...When Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke during his second term, his wife Edith with the collaboration of his aides effectively became acting president.)

I'm neither a medical doctor nor a psychiatrist. I'm not trying to diagnose John McCain from a distance. I'm only raising the question because, unlike your father or grandfather, or uncle, McCain is asking us to entrust the running of the United States to him. We need to be equally concerned about the mental health of any candidate for the presidency as well as their physical health. That being said, the following is a list of some early signs and symptoms of diminishing mental ability as we age...

From www.ehow.com:

Step1 Consider the family history. Is there a background of senile dementia or Alzheimer's disease? There is often a genetic predisposition toward this condition in members of the same family.

Step2 Look for signs of memory loss and language difficulties. Is the person losing words, or forgetting the names of common objects? Has he or she forgotten how to do simple mathematics?

Step3 Watch out for confusion and loss of attention span. Is the person unable to focus on a normal conversation? Does he or she get mixed up when trying to perform basic tasks?

Step4 Rule out undiagnosed hearing or vision loss. These may hinder a person's ability to communicate effectively, and can make someone seem more confused than he or she really is.

Step5 Monitor inappropriate behavior and impaired judgment. If the person begins to act inappropriately or significantly out of character in social situations, he or she may be showing signs of senile dementia.

Step6 Look out for mood changes, irritability or emotional agitation. Often, people in the early stages of senile dementia are aware that something is happening to them, and this can be both frightening and depressing.

Step7 Watch for physical coordination problems and physical confusion. People with senile dementia often forget how to do simple learned tasks that have been part of their daily life for many years.

Step8 Watch the person walk. Changes in gait are often symptomatic of senile dementia, although they can also be connected with other neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease.

Boehner's communist leader, the ever incompetent Beijing George Bush, and his heir wannabe Beijing John McCain are cut from the same communist cloth as John McCain sets out to copy China and their internet astroturfing:

People who sign up for McCain's program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain's webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

...snip...

More chillingly, dissidents alleged earlier this year that the Chinese government has paid Chinese citizens token sums for each favorable comment about government policies they post in chat rooms and on blogs.

That John Beijing McCain is just a red republican chip off of the old communist block...
(xposted at my brewery)

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/05/house-gop-attacks-beijing-george-bush-for-rebuffing-their-political-stunt-on-drilling/">Boehner's communist leader</a>, the ever incompetent <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/06/AR2008080603589.html">Beijing George Bush, and his heir wannabe Beijing John McCain</a> are cut from the same communist cloth as John McCain sets out to copy China and their internet astroturfing:<blockquote><i>People who sign up for McCain's program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain's webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

...snip...

More chillingly, dissidents alleged earlier this year that the Chinese government has paid Chinese citizens token sums for each favorable comment about government policies they post in chat rooms and on blogs.</i></blockquote><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/05/house-gop-attacks-beijing-george-bush-for-rebuffing-their-political-stunt-on-drilling/">That John <span style="font-style: italic;">Beijing</span> McCain is just a red republican chip off of the old communist block...</a>
<a href="http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping"></a>
xposted at <a href="http://drinkliberal.blogspot.com/2008/08/like-beijing-bush-like-beijing-mccain.html">drinking liberally in new milford</a>

Okay, I got trapped in a self-adulating post by NRO's Peter Wehner remarking on his prescience for thinking the Clintons were the most horrible things on earth ever since he first saw them. How was this confirmed? By recent letters from Obama fans commending him in his opinions by reiterating the nastiest language possible about the Clintons. Par for the course. But then I noticed he referred to his article back in January. Before the Jesse comment. In it, folks from The Nation and WaPo were already trashing Bill. In none too flattering hedge-your bets terms. Wow, what had the Clintons done at that point to deserve the ire? And then I thought to click on Greider's archives, where I found his posting from March 8, 2007 on Senator Inevitable. Wow, so one of the worst labels to stick on Hillary came from the supposed liberal press months before the famous Mark Penn memo.

You see, the press is just a-filled with people with grudges and tags and pithy anecdotes just waiting to trot them out at a moment's notice. They're none-too-clever, but they can recycle so much of this - from Gore to Kerry to Clinton to Obama - that they don't have to work too hard at it. So on any given day, a candidate might say "the sky is blue" and they'll start going through their archives to find a time when they said something related to blue, and if so, woe be to all, because they'll herd together like packrats and push all of their blue columns out at one time. How do they hit those deadlines? Cut-and-paste, of course. Recycle, re-use, no need to wash - no one can smell old laundry via print.

So why is Bill Clinton pissed? Because he knows some of this is still about the travel office, how reporters lost some of their perks at that time. Some is because he touched welfare, even though they can't quite say what harm came from it. Some is just because he's from Arkansas which still isn't cool. And so on. So when the time came, everyone was spring-loaded whatever he might say. And Rove-style, they hit him right in what he considered his strength, what were some of his greatest accomplishments.

And it's a bit funny, because with people complaining that Hillary helped McCain, here are Democrats and "progressives" providing fodder for the likes of the arch-and-unreasonable-conservativeNational Review who can then self-righteously use phrases like "blinded to the ruthlessness and corruption of the Clinton Machine", in sheer gall and chutzpah ignoring the exponentially more ruthless and corrupt Bush/Cheney/K Street Machine of the last 8 years. Of course NRO has no need to itemize any supposed high deeds of corruption by the Clintons - there's a trail of smears and innuendo that never panned out but is close enough for government-and-journalist work.

Hi there, come on in.  It's a rediculous time of the morning, so if you have a second I need to tell you something.  In real life, if you don't mind too much.

Firstly, thanks for stopping in for our usual get together.  I have truly, genuinely missed that this evening.  Real life caused severe storms that have caused my internet connection to fail completely and then become highly sporatic.  I may be able to send this, or may not.  If I can, and yet do not respond to any friend who answers, please know it is not that I wish to ignore you. Never will that be true.  Just that I simply can't.  It seems so wrong that the internet connections that fail can defeat the connections between us that succeed.

If I missed you this time, there will be another opportunity soon.  I promise.  Because I miss you.  Dare I ask, have you missed me tonight?

Thanks again for the brief allowance to enter the foray of "real" -

Melissa

Sigh. Stop with ad libs like "America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children." America will never be what it once was and will not be quite what we want it to be. The former is a good thing, the latter is just real life. The ugliness of America in the 1830's was huge. Don't bring it up on a campaign stump, but that's our legacy, at least the low bar from way back then. Perhaps we can't compare ourselves to The Greatest Generation (tm), but then the pitcher of martinis after work isn't making a comeback anytime soon either.

Let's just try a different formulation. Here's one for 7-year-olds: "Sometimes adults make mistakes, and they've made a lot of mistakes over the last few years. That's just a part of trying hard, of giving your best. But we learn to deal with those mistakes, to clean up after them, and thanks to kids like you, we know our future will always be better, because you'll do a better job than we did."

A formulation for adults: "I'm not proud of this administration, but I'm proud of America. Fact Check - this administration is not America. America slips once in a while, and listening to this administration is one of those times. But America gets back up on its feet and does the right thing. America learns from its mistakes, however bad, and makes sure its future is always brighter. That's the hope of America, since the beginning, and that's the hope I want to represent."

If you come away from this post learning one thing, it should be the definition and art of apophasis - affirming something by denying it. Joseph Romm does a good job of explaining why repeating something in the act of refuting it is ineffectual, and just gives a nice overview of one psychological side of public persuasion.

But you know what not to do. Don't click here.

<center><img src="http://media.sustainableindustries.com/images/Schweitzer_Brian_large.jpg"></center>

For as long as Obama has had the nomination, I've felt like his VP choice would be a genuine surprise -- someone who is not on the official list of possibilities.  Sen. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_biden">Joe Biden</a> is witty and would make a good attack dog, Gov. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkQ04Tk7dTk">Tim Kaine</a> might help in Virginia, and Gen. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kag0bBJVkIw">Wesley Clark</a> could provide the perfect trifecta of military credentials, antiwar positions, and outsider status.  (He's still probably my preferred choice.)  However, I still get this feeling Obama decided who he wanted to run with a long time ago, and it would be someone who plausibly fit with this whole theme of change and reform.  Who knows?  Maybe it's Feingold, Sebelius, Zinni, Gephardt, etc. etc.  Over the last few weeks, the various flare-ups of press attention about Kaine and then Sen. Bayh definitely look like a clever bait-and-switch on the part of the campaign.

I have no idea who he will pick, and I think he probably has a clever plan in place for whoever his choice is.  For some reason, though, I keep thinking Montana governor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Schweitzer">Brian Schweitzer</a> would be an interesting choice.  He'd be no help in a big swing state like Ohio or Missouri (though, improbably enough, MT is actually a swing state for the first time in 28 years), and I assume he has no experience on the national security issues.  But seeing lean, mean Obama next to a jovial, tubby guy from Montana seems like a nice tableaux to set for the election.  It would say, "NEW, NEW, NEW" -- here is a Democratic Party that represents a new generation and looks to the West.  Clark offers the substantive elements, in my opinion, but I'd like to see a totally fresh face with an untold storyline like Kaine or Schweitzer come to the fore.  Thoughts?

If the media is so pro-McCain, why are so little of their viewers swayed to vote Republican? If the media hates Obama, who do their viewers prefer him over McCain?
Only Fox News is an exception.

A new Rasmussen survey has found that:

Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Fox News viewers say they are likely to vote for John McCain, while those who watch CNN and MSNBC plan to support Barack Obama in November by more than two to one.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of CNN voters plan to vote for the Democratic candidate versus 26% who intend to go for the Republican. Similarly, MSNBC watchers plan to vote for Obama over McCain 63% to 30%.

Also,

Seventy percent (70%) of those who watch CBS’ Katie Couric every day plan to vote for Obama, as do 71% of the daily viewers of ABC’s Charles Gibson and 67% of those watching NBC’s Brian Williams.

Stop whining.

The McCain Capaign website has a new project up titled: Spread The Word:

Help spread the word about John McCain on news and blog sites. Your efforts to help get the message out about John McCain's policies and plan for the future is one of the most valuable things you can do for this campaign. You know why John McCain should be the next President of the United States and we need you to tell others why.

They are also offering points/prizes for posts, "through the McCain Online Action Center."

With an understanding nod towards the special needs of ditto-heads, they even publish "Today's Talking Points", for easy copy-n-pasting.

For some reason, The McCain Campaign did not list any of the TPM sites on their lists of blogs.

No sooner does the Pew Research Center publish findings of "Obama fatigue," than in walk the Clintons, as if on cue.
Senator Hillary Clinton is noncommittal about whether she'll pursue a roll-call vote at the Democratic convention in Denver.
And CNN reports that President Bill Clinton will speak at the convention on Wednesday, August 27, the "night of the vice presidential nominee's speech."
Wednesday is also the night of the vote.
UPI reports that President Clinton was personally invited to speak by Senator Obama.
Yet despite the significance of this development, esteemed oracles like Jonathan Alter persist in predicting that Senator Clinton is planning a "Greek drama" for the convention. Sen. Clinton had used the expression herself to mean that the custom of placing one's name in nomination has long existed, but the media's skill in turning her words against her is an occupational reflex.
Alter (among other oracles, like Chuck Todd), has a problem understanding what Bill meant when he said, "You can argue that nobody is ready to be president. . . . You can argue that even if you've been vice president for eight years, that no one can be fully ready for the pressures of the office."
I don't have a problem understanding his statement. If Jimmy Carter or Al Gore had said it, no one would notice. Sen. Obama had nothing but kind words for the former president. And as for Greek dramas at the convention, Obama said, "I think we're looking for energy and excitement."
Excitement, rather than fatigue, appears to be guaranteed.
Now I wish I were going to Denver.

There is, I believe, only really one thing that will inevitably result in a loss for Barack Obama.

(This is not to say that an Obama win is inevitable, nor is it to say that I believe such to be the case. But I think in most cases, unless Obama drastically fucks up, he will win, and I'm not the only to say or think so.)

If this election is about Obama, he loses. It's quite a simple concept, isn't it? What I mean by is that, if the focus of the election, in the minds of the voters, is on Obama, and on whether he's ready or able to be President, or on Obama's energy plan, or on Obama's health care plan, and on Obama's foreign policy... He will lose. If this election is about McCain, then Obama will surely win, though it is doubtful that it will have been for the right reasons. Winning on such grounds reduces us to the issue of "the lesser of two evils". Being elected on such terms is never a positive. But, if this election is about the American people, then Obama wins by a landslide.

This is not an election of whether one candidate is truly "better" on their policies and character. No. This is an election about what is best for America; for its economy, for its future, and for its people. I have no doubt that this is precisely why Obama refuses to take cheap shots against McCain (though I do not mean he does not fight back -- I much liked Obama's responses to the tire-gauge non-issue).

McCain understands what this election is about. But he knows he cannot win by arguing based on the American people, which is why we see ads like the Paris/Britney and "won't see the troops without the cameras". This is why John McCain has made the biggest flip-flop of the both of them by promising a civil campaign and not delivering.

But McCain also knows that if this election becomes about Obama, then the battle will be much harder for him. This is precisely why he has hammered on the "celebrity" image of Obama. Paris Hilton is a great example, in fact. When she's on screen, it's all about her, is it not? It's not about anyone else or anything else. Whether this is truly comparable to Obama is not the issue. But the idea in the voters' minds is.

Many people credit Reagan's landslide against Carter in 1980 with the simple question: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" For all of Reagan's ignorance and idiocy, he knew how to form the debate. If there was one thing I would suggest for Obama to do, it is to follow the Reagan example. Hammer home that people are not better off than they were four, or eight years ago.

When talking to people, or giving campaign speeches, ask: "Is your life easier than it was four years ago? Is it easier than it was eight years ago?" John McCain cannot rebut this. He cannot argue it. He cannot debate it. He will have lost before any debate can take place. As we all know, and the DNC quite rightly pointed out, McCain said we are better off than we were eight years ago.

If Obama can change the focus from either himself or McCain, and put it back on the American people, and their worries, their fears, their issues and problems; if Obama can do that, then McCain will go down in a crushing defeat.

Nikki Tinker's racist ads in the closing days of the primary lost her votes.  Rep Cohen won by 80%.  In his victory speach he said her ads were inefective but he was wrong.  They were efective in increasing hi margin of victory.

The Working Class Heretic

"Angry heckler" may be redundant, but watch the whole video to see how worked up this gentleman was in Cleveland yesterday.

I know, everyone has some wild theory on who is going to be the VP for Obama will be, and yes, this is my first post on TPM, but I really have been struck today but what I think is a clear indication that the pick will be none other than Hillary Clinton.

Now for the rest of the readers who did not immediately hit the back button, here is why. The fact that Clinton is openly pushing for there to be a role call for the delegate count. I do not for a moment believe that she thinks she’s going to overturn who is the nominee, but I do believe that she is making the fact that she got 18 million votes for a reason. What better way to put the ticket together than to say, Obama got X delegates, Clinton got Y delegates, and together we have united democrats of every race, gender, social class, ect.

The main reason is because Bill got the speech on Wednesday, which is slated right before Obama announces who his vice president is. I do not believe for a moment for this to be some sort of cosmic accident. I think this is set up for Bill to give a rousing speech on party unity, on what it means to be a democrat in America, to call his wife at the end, congratulate her for a courageous campaign, and then have the three of them on stage, as Obama, Hillary, and Bill, which would be a sight that people would remember for years. I know, I’m probably wrong and its going to be Bayh or someone of the like, but I think Obama is smarter than most people give him credit for. I also think the Clintons are brilliant politicians as well who would not be calling for this count to get people moving on away from Hillary, but to bring everyone together onto one ticket. -

TAvery

Ok, I tried posting this earlier, but something went wrong, and only the first paragraph got put up so here goes.

I know, everyone has some wild theory on who is going to be the VP for Obama will be, and yes, this is my first post on TPM, but I really have been struck today but what I think is a clear indication that the pick will be none other than Hillary Clinton.

 

Now for the rest of the readers who did not immediately hit the back button, here is why.