rubegreenhorn's Blog

Debate (foot in mouth): McCain sneers at "Women's Health"

2008-10-16T02:33:52Z

My meme for the night, with your help. In the abortion conversation, what was the sneering comment that McCain made about "women's health" being a ruse? It was a classic McCain angry moment, and it just jumped off the page at me as being dismissive and "out of touch." Thoughts?

I only wish that Obama had mentioned that Palin rejects abortion even in the case of rape.

Debate (foot in mouth): McCain sneers at "Women's Health"

2008-10-16T02:33:52Z

Missing the point on Lewis and Wallace

2008-10-12T19:45:11Z

Yes, John Lewis is black, George Wallace was a racist, and Obama is half Kenyan. But I think there's a serious misreading of Lewis's point. Lewis isn't playing any "race card" at all, despite how we tend to see Lewis and Wallace. He's simply responding, at a gut level, as one who's been there while the flames have been fanned high and terrible violence and assassinations have taken place. There's a lot of hate, anger, and basic misinformation that's permeating the Palin/McCain rallies right now (it was certainly present at the GOP convention, in my opinion as well), and Lewis is making pretty much the same observation that David Gergen (another Southerner) and others have been making: anger is being stoked and something terrible might come of it.

While race plays some part in some people's fear, their sense that Obama's a terrorist, a Muslim, or, as that one very angry man said the other day at the rally, a "socialist." (God Forbid). These guys have all sorts of wierd reasons why they're bent out of shape.

So, I don't think anyone's playing the race card; compared to previous elections (1968, 1988) I think that race is pretty muted, and that's why McCain is laying off (to some extent) of the Wright controversy. Lewis is flagging the vitriolic mood of the events as dangerous, and something that McCain/Palin should take some responsibility for. Period.

Palin Reading Answers

2008-10-03T04:06:26Z

Can someone help me nail down the clip, toward the end (about 15 minutes out, I think) where Palin keeps looking down at her "notes?" I didn't realize that people could come into debates with prepared notes, but it's pretty clear that she did and, at this one point in particular, she really focused on them every 2 seconds. It's a pretty brutal sequence if you look at it.

I do want to acknowledge that an earlier reader caught this, but since responses are running so quickly, I thought I'd get the issue back in the queue. It's a sequence that really undoes whatever gains that she made in the preparedness category.

About that Tax Return, Sarah....

2008-10-01T15:40:14Z

I really think that we should keep our eye on this one. When will it come out? There's so much under the radar with so much on the radar just now, but I'll bet a beer that there's something to take a look at in her files. Think that Independence Todd might have shorted the old USA a few dimes? I think so....

McCain Aide: "It's like a bad movie"

2008-09-26T22:10:58Z

"It's like a bad movie," one aide said privately Friday. "No one knows what we're doing. Everything is minute by minute now."

LA Times story

Don Quixote is having a little trouble keeping Sancho Panza on board at this point. And here I've been thinking the bad movie has been Palin and Being There.

On Beyond Chaos with Johnny Mac!

Country Last--How Low Can Johnny Go?

2008-09-26T06:34:02Z

Whatever one thinks of the Bailout, here's Boehner's own aide's take on why Republicans revolted:

But a top aide to Mr. Boehner said it was Democrats who had done the political posturing. The aide, Kevin Smith, said Republicans revolted, in part, because they were chafing at what they saw as an attempt by Democrats to jam through an agreement on the bailout early Thursday and deny Mr. McCain an opportunity to participate in the agreement.

New York Times

If he can't be the star, then we're not going to participate, even though we (Boehner and friends) actually think the plan is acceptable. I have a certain amount of respect for the hard-core free marketeers who are willing to let the chips fall where they may among the Republicans, even if I think there deregulatory schemes are verifiably and repeatedly disastrous, but the rest of these clowns?

Fricking amazing; as Josh's post earlier today (Thursday) note, citing a reader, it really brings the bizarreness of "John McCain, coming to the Convention live from the wind-blown oil derricks of the Gulf of Mexico" come through in all its true colors. It's as if he has Bush's flight suit on under his suit, and with Rick "Sancho Panza" Davis at his side (err....Rick may have been disappeared--that was the breaking story in the campaign before the "suspension"), he is tilting his way into the outer reaches of some bizarre maverickland, where he can make sh*t up an almost hourly basis. Because he's a leader, dammit.

Some day, and maybe before the election, some Republican is going to unload on him for being a complete egomaniacal horse's ass.

About that Tax Return, Sarah

2008-09-24T03:45:19Z

Haven't heard anything about this in quite a while, and I'm beginning to think that they're not so eager to release her returns. Since the Per Diems weren't in the press until recently (and I doubt the McCain Team knew about it until then), I'm wondering if they show up on her tax return as they should (as I understand it.) Let's not lose sight of this while we're all waiting for her to have a real press conference. Where are her tax returns?

"The Economy is Fundamentally Sound"; repeat, The Eco

2008-09-18T06:22:24Z

My new TV commercial (feel free to improve the words, but I think the concept is a good one):

McCain: The economy is fundamentally sound

(Background: diving stock prices, various bailouts in newsclippings)

"The Economy is fundamentally sound."

Bankruptcies, bailouts, CEOS walking away with millions after destroying American companies. When congress had the chance to hold them accountable with sound regulation, John McCain blinked:

John McCain: "I'm always for less regulation" (from WSJ).

He even wanted to put our Social Security money into the stock market!

Now he claims he'll fix the system

John McCain helped break the system. With Barack Obama, we can fix it.

Time for the John McCain senility ads

2008-09-12T18:39:58Z

John McCain keeps confusing reality.

Lie 1
Lie 2
Lie 3

Is something wrong with John McCain? Does he know what reality is anymore?

Uncaging the Voters--A High Return on Investment Strategy

2008-09-12T05:17:00Z

My greatest appreciation for those registering new voters. Amen, amen, amen.

But I'm thinking there's a particularly high return on investment opportunity that needs to be taken.

We know that voters in Macomb County, Michigan are being caged by the GOP if they are on the foreclosure list (and presumably Democratic or non-Albino.)

http://www.marketwatch.com/...

Whereas the perversion of American democracy has been accomplished the last two presidential elections by just such methods, we need to get busy on this. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosures in Michigan, and certainly there are more today. These folks are disproportionately people of color and probably have a hell of a lot on their mind dealing with everyday life, and might not have re-registered to vote.

We know that the GOP will put all of their effort behind suppressing the vote. It's their specialty. While we can try to fight them at the sites and in the courts, we can also get a hold of the foreclosure lists across the country (I think it's public record), cross-reference them with Democratic Party IDs, and re-register every single one of them with a lot of effort. While registering new voters is a godsend, here we have people who have a history and have a pretty good reason to want change. We have their names and former addresses. I think we should make sure that this is being pursued at the highest levels. I'm in, and will recruit everyone I know who will be interested (which is probably around 3-400 people) to get to work on this. I don't know if DNC or Obama folks are on this at all. If they are, point me to them and I'm ready to work. If not, let's get this baby rolling. I spent 24 hours on the ledge wandering how in the world an undecided voter could be tipped by Sarah Palin, and I'm back on good solid earth ready to do some serious work. Who's in, and who can help get this organized at the upper levels, and can help cross-reference information with a kick-ass database?

For more info., see

Michigan Messenger
Peace, Rube

Shameless Sarah: Speaking out of Both Sides of Her Mouth

2008-09-12T03:09:53Z

While she’s accused Obama of talking one way in San Francisco and another in some small town, it’s clear that Palin has one message for the religious right and another for the general public. For her church, she described the war in Iraq as follows: "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." When talking to Charlie Gibson, she attempted to twist the meaning of her words to an entirely different outlook: “....the reference...is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.”

Sarah Palin, have you no shame? This is an obvious and direct LIE. The first is an unequivocal statement about the mission in Iraq being God’s mission. Lincoln, who came into office practically an atheist, deliberately eschewed the certainty that the religious right consistently claims, that they were doing God’s will. Can’t you just admit that you either believe that the war is God’s mission, or that you were lying to your church when you said that? As someone should have asked Samuel Alito, were you lying then or are you lying now, because the two things can’t be simultaneously true.

By the way, Abraham Lincoln destroyed secessionist traitors, rather than courting their vote. Perhaps you can give your husband a Mary Todd Lincoln biography about supporting the country rather than trying to dismember it.

Rape Victim Gate

2008-09-11T17:36:40Z

The key punch line:

Unlike any other city in Alaska, Palin and her hand-picked police chief charged rape victims to pay for their own medical tests. The cost: less than Sarah Palin paid herself for staying in her own home when she was collecting "travelling" perks.

Stolen from Dkos.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/11/10526/9939/96/594843

The Morgue at St. Paul, and Palin has peaked--she can only go down from here.

2008-09-05T03:40:20Z

I listened to the first part on the radio and got to my TV just after the protests--all you could really hear were these full-throated "USA USA" chants that sounded wierd and chaotic. When I came in to see the speech, the place looked entirely like a morgue. It wasn't really clear how much of this was from the fallout of the protesters, but there was a palpable sense--it seemed to me--that the speech was an absolute bomb. There was no emotion in the crowd at all, half-hearted applause, people standing but clearly without any conviction. They looked pretty dazed, as if all their seratonin had been used up in Palin's "Slap-the-Liberal" fest. McCain's words on paper were fine, but it was dead. Finally it picked up with the POW stuff, but really, I think you've have to call it a stinker.

As far as Palin, don't despair, don't hold back on the legitimate issues. Blog vetting on her many problems were not the problem, with the exception of the far-fetched Bristol is Trig's mom story, which clearly backfired (no surprise there.) But that only served to take the focus off of the earmarking, Cheneyesque aspects of Palin. Face it, her speech was 75% red meat and 25% canned zingers and telegenic ability. She was a complete laughing stock for 6 days and she of course is not as ridiculous--when she can control the air with no questions--as she was made out to be. But she isn't going to get any better than that.

We are going to win. We need to fight for it. Donate, Hit the streets, phone bank, talk with love and patience to those who can be reached. The Earmark Queen and McSame of 7 Houses are going down, and we're going to take them there.

Digg the Earmark story

2008-09-03T18:14:10Z

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-earmarks3-2008sep03,0,2482434.story

The best ad that I can imagine after Palin's speech: she's an earmark specialist, so bad that even McCain noted her, but of course he doesn't care about that any more, so desperate is he to win at any cost.

Digg the story if you can. I think it's important that we keep the conversation on something other than her family at this point.