Yesterday Andrew Sullivan took the rightwing Riehl blog to task for its execrable comments about Obama's visit to his grandmother. However,  another deep problem for the RW with that stream shows up in todays reply. We expect this type of behavior from the lunatic fringe and if honest, one must admit that there's been some similarly slimy stuff thrown from the extreme left too.

But the realpolitik problem with Riehl and other neo-Roves' despicable screeds is that they are in no small part responsible for the the flight of moderate Conservatives from the Republican party.

Being incredibly biased and detestable in one's opinions is (sadly) an American right. Being dishonest in your reporting of facts is not. Your cred becomes zero.

Both are reasons the Rep. party is imploding.

They will be a small tribe wandering in the political wilderness for a very long time unless they realize that the dynamic has shifted away from this type of behavior.

In an interview with the Washington Times today, John McCain "lashed out at a litany of Bush policies and issues that he said he would have handled differently as president" over the last 8 years.  You can listen to the audio of the WT interview here.

Amazingly, McCain goes on to say that Obama's plans will be "doubling down" on the failed Republican policies. Only one problem - he voted for 90% of them.

Jeez... what's next?
In breaking news, John McCain announced today that the invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake - he also blamed Barack Obama for failing to tell him not to vote for it. "How dare he keep this vital information from me. The blood of 4000 Americans is on his hands" McCain added.

Because the DoE reported that if the OilCos started last May, ANWR crude won't start supplementing US energy supplies until 2020. Meanwhile, down in Cali, these guys will be crankin out 177 megawatts of clean, safe and spill-proof electricity from solar energy a decade earlier.

Ausra switches on new solar power plant
Matt Nauman
SAN JOSE -- California's first new solar-thermal power plant in nearly 20 years went into operation Thursday morning near Bakersfield--a precursor to a much larger plant planned for San Luis Obispo County. Constructed by Ausra, based in Palo Alto, the Kimberlina plant in Kern County will generate five megawatts of electricity, enough for about 3,500 homes. While the amount of power is small, the plant's opening is significant, said Bob Fishman, Ausra's president, chairman and chief executive officer. Ausra's demonstration project is to be the foundation for a 177-megawatt plant near the Carrizo Plain National Monument in San Luis Obispo County's eastern extreme.

 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has contracted to buy the electricity from that $550 million plant, which is scheduled to go online in 2011. "A lot of people in this energy space make a lot of claims," said Fishman, a 30-year power- industry veteran who joined the solar startup in 2007. "We built this facility to show everybody that we're not just talkers, we're doers." Most people think of photovoltaic panels on rooftops when they think of solar. Fishman said that's not what Ausra does with solar. They use large mirrors to reflect sunlight to heat water in tubes. The created steam turns a turbine and generates electricity.

According to the state Energy Commission, eight solar-thermal plants that could potentially generate 3,869 megawatts of electricity are either under review by the state or are expected to be filed in the near future.

Solar-thermal technology is considered a key component for utilities to meet California's renewable energy standard of 20 percent by 2010.

There's more here:
San Luis Obispo Tribune| 10/24/2008

No, really.

On NBC tonight Sarah Palin said she'd release her medical records... did they really want to go there? With only a week and a half left - do you really want to have the oldest guy with the worst health in the campaign be the only one who hasn't really released his records?

All I know is Andrew Sullivan will be the first one at the door digging for that birth certificate.

Time for a little rah-rah stuff.

Deroy Peraza from my hometown in Brooklyn, has designed these gorgeous Obama art posters available in hi-resolution files for FREE. You can download and print to your hearts content.

Give them away to your friends, family and neighbors. Make new friends, or annoy the Obama-haters in your life. Put them on your online social pages and send the files to everybody and tell them to do the same.

Just a few days left to show the rest of the world that we will win and win big on Nov 4th.

Go forth and SHOW YOUR OBAMA COLORS!

Free Printable Obama Posters by Deroy Peraza: 
Since I can't contain my excitement over the current state of affairs in the 2008 presidential primaries, I felt like the least I could do was put some of my skills to good use. We've put together a fresh batch of homemade Barack Obama posters and invite you to download and disseminate at will (just don't sell it, it's meant to be free).
-- deroy

[RHOmea: Since the original post seemed to raise the spector of spam to some, I have altered it in a minor fashion. Mr Peraza is neither selling these, nor profiting from this link to his blog so this is not spam nor an inducement to buy anything. I do hope however that you will enjoy Deroy Peraza's lovely design work as much as I do.]

... then I could get away with calling Thomas Sowell an Uncle.

Comparing Obama to Jones, Hitler and Mao in one sentence?
Nice.
Ripping Godwin's Law into a million shreds.
Priceless.


Political Perceptions: Is Love for Obama Blind?
Thomas Sowell thinks love for Sen. Barack Obama is blind. Writing on National Review Online, the African-American intellectual says of "true believers" in Obama: "They have made up their minds and not only don't want to be confused by the facts, they resent being told the facts...." He argues that "many 20th-century leaders with inspiring rhetoric and great self-confidence led their followers or their countries into utter disasters. These ranged from Jim Jones who led hundreds to their deaths in Jonestown to Hitler and Mao who led millions to their deaths."

when her party is full of elephants.

Click HERE to see another Palin moose nugget.

AKMuckrakers full story is here.

In breaking news today, Politico is reporting that the RNC spent over $150,000 of donated funds to clothe and accessorize Sarah Palin and her family since her pick by John McCain a few weeks ago.

Republican Party envy-mitigation specialist Meg Stapleton was quick to preempt any criticism:
"we know the Democrats will be all over this but let me point out that the total amount spent on the entire Palin family was less, less than, the value of one of Cindy McCain's diamond earrings, so we can't see what the fuss is all about."

Meanwhile, Democrats were pressing a different parry at the Republican largesse obligé. Bespokeperson and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has great experience with largesse, pointed out that Palin's clothes closet would pay less tax under the Obama tax plan than under John McCain's.

Fox News reporters caught up with Sarah Palin in Nieman Marcus, sampling anti-perspirant made from platinum crystals created in the Space Station and organic vanilla beans grown on Moorea. When asked about the dissonance created by her campaigning about Joe the Plumber, yet spending $2,500 of his and other hard-working Republicans' donations on a single Valentino jacket she said: "We aren't dissin Joe or any of the real Americans in the pro-America places who would vote for us. Let them wear Walmart!"

Fox News Sean Hannity reported: "Sarah Palin is a just another good American with small town values who is following her President's call to keep shopping to get America out of its current economic slump." He added, "And she looked totally hot in those Ferragamo boots!"


UPDATE:  Moments ago, one Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher was seen writing out a check at the Obama campaign headquarters in Toledo, Ohio. When approached, he declined to comment, but campaign workers reported that he wandered away mumbling "Jeez, ya think they coulda at least paid off my tax lien".

But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.

A true story from FiveThirtyEight.com

"So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks.
Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game.
Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly:
"We're voting for the n***er."

We've heard all about the "Bradley Effect" and the "Obama Effect". Now let me tell you what my dear departed uncle - a good man and devout Irish-Catholic who liked his stout but wasn't too keen on the Sons of Israel - used to say about such matters in New York City. Especially when he felt compelled to vote for a Jew, Abe Beame, as Mayor to fix the 70's fiscal crisis crippling the city.

"There is no such thing as a two-fisted voter."

When a bigot goes into the voting booth and pulls the curtain (ahhh, the good old days), he's got his bigotry in one hand and his wallet in the other.

Which one do you think he's gonna drop to pull the voting lever?

In both Palin and McCain's stump speeches, they just love to talk Pork. big thick juicy slabs of it. Sen McCain likes to tell the Red States how Barack Obama has been pulling pork in Illinois faster than a Carolina barbecue joint after Church on Sunday. In Denver, he told the party faithful: "I'll make them famous, and you'll know their names. You'll know every one of them!

Well, unlike promising a clean campaign on the issues, no robocall smears and cutting all ties with Charles Keating; John McCain has kept his word this time. He has named the name, and he made her famous, and lucky for us, he started with the Queen of the Sty: Sarah Palin.

You see Sen. McCain also pointed out that we should check the facts on the website of Citizens Against Government Waste so I did and... you betcha that Sister Sarah, she sure does love her some pork!!!!

Turns out that in 2008, against a 50 state average of $33.77 per capita, Alaska took in a moose-sized $555.54 of pork spending per every man, woman and child... almost 17 times more than your average and more than that vs. most blue states. Unsurprisingly that puts Alaska at the Number 1 seat at the CAGW "PigBook" table. Just in case you think she doesn't like to take seconds, well guess where Alaska was in 2006? Numero Uno. And guess who is projected to be the Queen of the Sty again in 2009?

So what about that good-for-nothing pork-barreler Obama and his thievin' blue state of Illinois? Must be Number 2 since McCain was naming names in Denver right? Try Number 26 at over $8 less than the average - and dropping 5 positions since 2006 to boot.

OK, so we're all in it together aren't we? Red, Blue, hell we all pay our taxes  (except for Joe the Almost-a-Plumber) and we all get our benefits right?.  Errrrrmmmm, no... It seems that we have a rather incredible imbalance as according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, Alaskan taxpayers gets $1.85 back in Federal funds while states like, say Illinois, loses a quarter of every dollar they pay in.

The Tax Foundation agrees with John Sperling, Ph.D who shows, unequivocally, who the national Welfare Queens really are - small town America and the Red states. In his book The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America he reports the data that, overall, Red states in the 2004 election have taken an average $1.89 per dollar paid in, while Blue state taxpayers subsidize this "Tax Welfare" even though the Blue states represent 66% of the population.

So what should you do the next time "Naming Names" McCain tells you that Obama's tax cuts are "welfare",  and Sarah the Lipsticked Porker gets on TV and advertises her new reality show 'Nowhere 99901'?

GRAB YOUR WALLET BLUE STATERS - because McCain/Palin with their red state "small town values" are coming to DEVALUE your hard-earned blue money, not the chicken feed they'd get from most of the people who would put them in the White House.

Yet another revelatory junk sighting about the completely innocuous Obama - Ayers connex hits the Internets in this book blurb on the aptly named Zombietime site

Let's just think about this for second.

First, instead of playing into this Rove-inspired trip to the Twilight Zone, lets ask a question of logic:

IF, the McCain camp truly feels that Bill Ayers is a "terrorist" and that any association, no matter how innocuous, is toxic.
AND, former Ambassador Walter Annenberg, famous friend to Nixon & Reagan whose wife is a touted endorser of John McCain  actually hired and paid William Ayers for several years
THEN, shouldn't the McCain campaign forcefully renounce the Annenberg endorsement instead of celebrating it on their website?

Gee, can't wait for the headline on Fox News:
BREAKING NEWS: MCCAIN CAMP CALLS LEONOR ANNENBERG TERRORIST SYMPATHIZER!  Demands she dissolve and step down from leadership of ultra-leftist radical Annenberg Challenge and donate all proceeds to failing GOP political fund. "You can take this endorsement and shove it!" screams Palin to howling crowd at moonlit rally.

[NB: RHOmea is not holding breath]

Hats off to The Washington Independent for keeping on the scent. The Keating law firm, tho no longer run by Charles the Corrupt, is still heavily connected to the McCain campaign and run by Keatings nephew, who is a partner, and other large bore donors to the Senator's campaign. Read on...

Keating Firm Raises $50K for McCain Campaign (Washington Independent)
"Here's something that slipped under the radar yesterday. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan organization that tracks money in elections, employees of a law firm founded by Charles Keating Jr. have bundled more than $50,000 in contributions to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign."

FROM THE CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS:
The Keating $50,000 Individuals at a law firm founded by Charles H. Keating, Jr., who symbolized how political influence contributed to the collapse of savings and loans in the 1980s, have bundled at least $50,000 to John McCain's presidential campaign since June, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has calculated, making the Cincinnati-based law firm McCain's sixth-largest contributor during that period. McCain was among "The Keating Five," a group of senators who benefited from more than $1 million in campaign contributions connected to Keating and personally intervened with government regulators to allow his S&L to make risky investments that ultimately defrauded thousands of investors and cost taxpayers $3.4 billion.

In amounts ranging from $200 to $2,300, about 30 partners and employees of the legal firm Keating, Muething and Klekamp, as well as their family members, have contributed $50,200 to McCain's 2008 campaign. All but two of the contributions came in July, and all but three of those July donations were logged on July 31, suggesting they were delivered at the same time. As with any bundle of campaign contributions, it's difficult to determine which donor was the "bundler," the person who solicited the contributions on the campaign's behalf. McCain's online roster of bundlers, which purports to name any individual bundling $50,000 or more for the campaign, does not associate any of McCain's major fund-raisers with the Keating firm.

[ RHOmea sez: gee, I wonder why?]

While Keating did the time, Cindy McCain kneaded the dough.

If six board meetings with Ayers is so important, why isn't profiting from a relationship with convicted felon Charles Keating - while he was in prison - headline news? Especially after McCain testified to Congress that the relationship was completely severed back in 1987 and he called it "the worst mistake of my life" in his book .

Watch McCain testify under Senate oath in 1990 on C-SPAN video (at 13:30:15) that he had NO contact with Keating whatsoever after 1987. He goes on to say that he had no contact with American Continental even though his wife was still benefiting until 1998 from investments in the same Keating concern.

THE REALITY?

The Washington Independent
By John Dougherty 10/10/08 12:39 PM

PHOENIX--Sen. John McCain's wife and father-in-law continued a lucrative business partnership with disgraced financier Charles H. Keating Jr. for 11 years after the GOP presidential nominee said he ended his close friendship with Keating in March 1987.
Cindy McCain's business partnership with Keating in a real-estate development between 1986 and 1998 netted her a tidy profit, in addition to years of significant tax benefits. Her father, who died in 2000, earned similar returns.

FULL STORY HERE

Sometimes it's the small stuff that matters. Turn signals are the smallest lights on a car, but they are the ones you should pay the most attention to when everything is moving at 70 mph:

TACOMA, Washington (CNN) - Joe Biden thanked Colin
Powell for endorsing Barack Obama Sunday, saying that with his choice
of Obama over John McCain, questions about the Illinois senator's
ability to be commander-in-chief will be put to rest.

"From the very beginning, this Republican party has tried to suggest that Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama, wasn't ready to be commander-in-chief," said the Delaware senator to more than 11,000 supporters in a minor league ballpark, his biggest crowd to date when campaigning without Obama.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com

In Sarah Palin's first campaign speech, her acceptance of the nomination at the Republican National Convention, she set the lines for what would become one of major themes: the value and goodness of "small town America". She said,  "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity... They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... and fight our wars.". She told us city-folk, "They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America", while she went on to identify who lives in small towns - her, her family and people who look and think like them.

Palin and her running mate' s increasingly divisive narrative in the last weeks of small town vs city, plumber vs manager, and us vs them has been taken up as a battle cry for the entire Republican machine, even as she has refined it into the idea that there are "pro-America" parts of the country and some not:. Rep Bachmann (R-MN) on MSNBC's Hardball  channeling McCarthy while dividing Americans and then the Congress into "pro" and "anti" America; attempts to call Barack Obama a terrorist by association, "robocalls" being made using racial epithets and implying that Obama is a Muslim, and rabble-rousing by McCain & Palin using absurd attacks based on falsehoods even after they have been long debunked.

So successful is the McCain/Palin exploitation of division, fear and undertones of racism, that their most rabid followers that their supporters are beginning to believe the narrative that only white folks in small towns work hard, pay taxes, love America and fight and die for it.

But, in just a few minutes on NBC's Meet the Press today Colin Powell has exposed the rank hypocrisy of Palin's small town comparative and the myth in her party's divisive fictions.

In the pre-explanation of his ringing endorsement of Barack Obama for President, former four star General and Secretary of State Colin Powell described the story of Army Cpl. Kareem Rashad Khan, a young American of the Muslim faith and Arab descent who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. From all accounts, this boy born and raised just 60 clicks south of the World Trade Center, would never have stood for hyphenating his citizenship. He was not Arab-American, just as American as apple pie: his dad a small business owner, him a lover of Disney World, fishing and video games who joined the ROTC as soon as he was able. He wasn't from a small town and he wasn't white or Christian but after the attacks of 9/11, he waited impatiently until he reached 18, joined the Army and went straight to Iraq just like the 1000's of others of fine American men and women from metropolitan areas around the country.

Their mothers, of all colors and creeds, cry over the graves just as sadly as their rural brethren. Like another American Muslim fighting for his country, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan of a Virginia bedroom community outside Washington DC. killed in Baghdad. Latino National Guard Staff Sgt. Humberto Timoteo, of Newark, N.J. and a fine black American, Marine Lance Cpl. Todd Bolding of Houston, TX killed in Iraq's Anbar Province. Even recent immigrants stand and fight for this country like Juan Lopez, a Mexican-American who immigrated to Georgia as a teenager, joined the Marines and was killed in an ambush in Iraq at 22.

This Republican attempt to gerrymander the country in to "good and bad" American pieces for the sake of winning an election is a national disgrace. Their comments cast a shadow on the sacrifices that all our soldiers make for our country. It insults ALL Americans who sacrifice blood, sweat and tears each and every day. Rich and poor, dark and fair, Christian, Jew and Muslim.

The Palin narrative is a dangerous and divisive myth and it took the courage and good instincts of Colin Powell, one of this nation's heroes, to expose what another war hero, John McCain, should have stopped before it ever got started: the corrosive concept that any city, any state or any American place loves their country more than another, just because they disagree with the way the Republican Party has run it.

Let's hope that Gen Powell's message of the shared service, sacrifice and courage of all Americans will get through to Sarah Palin and her Republican cohorts before they do any more damage to the fabric of this great nation.

Let's hope Barack Obama's message of reconciliation and strength through American unity will replace their message of fear, mistrust and discord in the hearts and minds of the millions of Americans they have despoiled.

Insh'Allāh