Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Headlines - Wednesday

 
 
Thank you, Mr. Brokaw, for structuring the debate in the same order, with practically the exact same questions, as the first debate a week and a half ago. Thanks for spending 90 minutes providing the same information that Jim Lehrer did. Great work, Tom.

 
AP analysis of the debate: 
 
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McCain's 17 lies (about "that one") http://therecord.barackobama.com/?p=2001
 
And about that $3 million dollar "projector" McCain accused Obama of voting for?
 
It was for the Adler Planetarium in Chicago - one of the top science centers in the country that specializes in, oh, science education.

Projecting a HD image on a large dome isn't like showing an overhead transparency at a meeting, John. It takes an array of high luminosity, high definition LCD projectors powered by an array of computers. Calling it an "overheard projector" is grossly misleading. Why does John McCain hate science?
  
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Hmmm. Seems some wingnuts are not happy about McCain's performance last night. Markos has several of them, but here are a couple of previews:
 
Andrew McCarthy - NRO:
 
We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case [...]

Great. Memo to McCain Campaign: Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn't; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he's qualified for public office. You helped portray Obama as a clealy qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists.

If that's what the public thinks, good luck trying to win this thing.

With due respect, I think tonight was a disaster for our side. I'm dumbfounded that no one else seems to think so. Obama did everything he needed to do, McCain did nothing he needed to do. What am I missing?
 
Here's another one:
 
Well I have gone outside and pulled up my Mcain/Palin sign. This election is over. I will vote for Mcain but I know that come Nov. 5 Obama will be our president-elect.

I feel sorry for Sarah Palin. A once promising career will be permanently connected to the landside loss of John McCain.

I weep for my children and their families.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Doughy Pantload over at the NRO was a lot more positive:

"I thought McCain's close was about as good as he gets. Honorable. Decent. Serious. Manly."

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[Debate,+10.7.08+++3.jpg]

America's American American straight talking American maverick routs Oba.....Instant Polls Find Obama Won Debate

CNN poll of debate viewers: That One 54%, McNohandshake 30%

CBS poll of uncommitted voters: That One 39%, McNohandshake 27%

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$2 trillion in retirement savings wiped out:
 
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Fascism ought more properly be called corporatism because it is the perfect merger of power between the corporation and the state." --Benito Mussolini
 
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Fourth Marriage

A woman, married three times, walked into a bridal shop one day and told the sales clerk that she was looking for a wedding gown for her fourth wedding.

"Of course, madam," replied the sales clerk, "exactly what type and color are you looking for?"

The bride to be said: "A long frilly white dress with a veil."

The sales clerk hesitated a bit, then said, "Please don't take this the wrong way, but gowns of that nature are considered more appropriate for brides who are being married the first ! time - for those who are a bit more
innocent, if you know what I mean? Perhaps ivory or sky blue would be nice?"

"Well," replied the customer, a little peeved at the clerk's directness, "I can assure you that a white gown would be quite appropriate.
Believe it or not, despite all my marriages, I remain as innocent as a first time bride.
You see, my first husband was so excited about our wedding, he died as we were checking into our hotel. My second husband and I got into such a terrible fight in the limo on our way to our honeymoon that we had that wedding annulled immediately and
never spoke to each other again."

"What about your third husband?" asked the sales clerk.

"That one was a Republican," said the woman, "and every night for four years, he just sat on the edge of the bed and told me how good it was going to be, but nothing ever happened.."
 
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Free at last

A federal judge rules that seven Chinese Uighurs, not deemed enemy combatants, should simply be released from Gitmo immediately, where they have been detained as innocents for seven years, and be allowed to stay in the US. The Bush administration is resisting, of course. But the judge is adamant that the constitution come before any administration:

The ruling, handed down by Federal District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, marked the first time that any United States court rejected government arguments and ordered the release of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, an American naval base in Cuba, since the detention center there opened in 2002.


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When will the press do its job?
 
I'll take "never" for $1,000, Alex.
 
Palinjewelsamadafpgetty
 
They have blinked, as Richard Cohen reiterates today. A good contrast with Hillary Clinton:

Can you imagine the reaction of the press corps if Clinton had given the audience a hi-ya-sailor wink? Can you imagine the feverish blogging across the political spectrum if Clinton had claimed credit for stopping a bridge that, in fact, had set her heart aflutter? What if she showed she didn't know squat about the Constitution, if she could not tell Katie Couric what newspapers or magazines she reads or if she claimed intimacy with foreign relations based on sighting Russia through binoculars?

My view is that the Palin candidacy is such a farce the mainstream media simply do not know what to do. The sane response is to dismiss it as a joke, to reveal the vacuity and mendacity of her record, to demand an open-ended press conference, and to hash out the ignorance and bigotry and crass populism she channels. But that would not be "balanced," would it?

The press would - gasp - be accused of bias. We would stand convicted of insufficient deference. And we would be shamed for asking "unspeakable" factual questions. The question the media has to ask of ourselves: are our own precious egos and reputation wirth more than doing our actual jobs?

We have less than a month to redeem ourselves. Demand a press conference with Palin for as long as it takes to get through all the questions. Demand release of all McCain's and Obama's and Biden's and Palin's health records, especially dealing with McCain's cancer risk, Biden's aneurysm history and Palin's bizarre fifth pregnancy. These are not luxuries for an election campaign. They are the minimal requirements of a minimally functioning press corps, doing its job to get as much information about these people out to the voters.

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Yep, time for another helicopter drop of dough from Helicopter Ben, as he tries to prevent a deflationary spiral from Hell (or at least 1930-1931) from breaking out. Will it work? Well, it depends on how many helicopters ole' Helicopter Ben has, I suppose...

 
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McCain's Ugly Core

Keep reading: Link

McCain -- speaking in New Mexico -- delivered one of the ugliest, nastiest, most invective-filled  personality attacks a major candidate has ever delivered, blatantly designed to stoke raw racial resentments and depict Obama as a Manchurian candidate funded by secret Arab Terrorist sources -- a truly unstable and hate-mongering rant filled with lines like these, delivered with an angry scowl to screaming, howling, booing throngs, while Cindy McCain stood behind him shaking her head in disgust at each fact she heard about the Black Terrorist daring to challenge her husband:

"I don't need any lessons in being honest with the American people, and if I did, I wouldn't seek it from a Chicago politician...There's much we don't know about Senator Obama. For a guy who has authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. Who is the real Barack Obama?" 

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Elijah Cummings talking about what AIG execs were doing the week after The Bailout.


Have you heard of anything more outrageous - a week after taxpayers commit $85 billion dollars to rescue AIG, the company's leading insurance executives spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation…Let me describe for some of you the charges that the shareholders, taxpayers, had to pay. AIG spent $200,000 dollars for hotel rooms. Almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon. They were getting manicures, facials, pedicures and massages while American people were footing the bill. And they spent another $10,000 dollars for I don't know what this is, leisure dining. Bars?


Shameful. Get a look at the actual hotel bill here.

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Comrade

Ah, schadenfreude!

They don't call him President Bush in Venezuela anymore.

Now he's known as "Comrade."

With the Bush administration's Treasury Department resorting to government bailout after government bailout to keep the U.S. economy afloat, leftist governments and their political allies in Latin America are having a field day, gloating one day and taunting Bush the next for adopting the types of interventionist government policies that he's long condemned.

"We were just talking about that this morning on the floor," said Congressman Edwin Castro, who heads the leftist Sandinista congressional bloc in Nicaragua. "We think the Bush administration should follow the same policies that they and the International Monetary Fund have always told us to follow when we have economic problems — a structural adjustment that requires cutting government spending and reducing the role of government.

"One of our economists was telling us that Bush has just implemented communism for the rich," Castro said

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Rudy Giuliani trotted out the talking points on Fox, citing Wright, Ayers and Rezko all as examples how Obama has shown a failure in judgement. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs tees it up and says that taking advice on judgement from Giuliani, the man who championed his now indicted friend Bernie Kerik for the top job at Homeland Security, is like "being called ugly by a frog." See the video here.

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Neocon movie lays box office egg

An American Carol, the movie that attempts to satirize liberals by portraying Michael Moore as an American hating Scrooge did so poorly at the box office this last weekend ($3.8 million gross) losing badly to a mediocre comedy about a Beverly Hills Chihuahua of all things, that its producers are claiming a left wing, Hollywood liberal conspiracy to prevent an accurate count of ticket sales. No really, they are:

We have had heard from numerous people across the country that there has been some ticket fraud when buying a ticket for An American Carol this past weekend.

Please check your ticket. If you were in fact one of those people that were "mistakenly" sold a ticket for another movie please fill out the form below. Hold on to your ticket so we can have proof.

If you have noticed other irregularities with the theatres in your area please let us know in the comment section below. For instance, Rated R film rating (when in fact we are rated PG-13), posters not being up, not being listed on the marquee, image or focus problems, sound issues, etc.

Please email us a picture of your ticket stub to fraud@americancarol.com

We are investigating.

I don't know. Maybe people just like Michael Moore playing himself on screen more than they do Kelsey Grammer playing a bastardized version of the Ghost of General Patton. Or maybe the market for conservative crap is heading in the same general direction as the rest of the economy - down, Down, DOWN. In any event, the "Free Market" has spoken. Michael Moore movies break box office records. Conservative "comedies" attacking Michael Moore do not. Why won't they just accept their butt kicking like a chihuahua?

Fun fact: Here's how Bill Maher's Religulous fared over the weekend, when stacked up against An American Carol: 

Film Box Office Gross # Screens Average
American Carol $3,810,000 1,639 $2,325
Religulous $3,500,000 502 $6,972

Note that the neocon movie was shown on three times as many screens. And yet the box office receipts were nearly the same.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

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While the economy falls apart with the speed of a sand castle hit by the incoming tide, The Emperor was off making a speech to one of the last friendly groups he's got - corporate lawyers. He told them it was all the Democrats' fault that there weren't more GOP hacks on the federal benches. For some reason, the Donkeys have been dragging their feet about confirming racists, bigots, and corporate flacks.

George said, "We've seen the profound impact that judges can have on the daily lives of every citizen. We saw the power of judges in 2002, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it contained the words 'under God.'"

Wow, that's a profound impact on the daily lives of every citizen, all right. He went on to mention Boumediene v. Bush, which rejected indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantanamo, and "partial-birth" abortion. So if you had plans to recite the Pledge of Allegiance while having a partial-birth abortion in Guantanamo, think again, sister!

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The first time South Dakotans (none I know) tried to make abortion illegal, it failed by a distressingly small margin because there were no exceptions in the case of rape and incest. This time they have indeed written "exceptions" into the law. But they're bogus exceptions:

According to Marvin Buehner, a pro-choice Rapid City doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, the law, even with these exceptions, would 'amount to a total ban.' As Dr. Buehner told the Washington Post, 'If there's a risk of a Class 4 felony if I don't meet the ambiguous standard of 'serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily organ or system,' there's no way I would consider doing an abortion for health reasons. This represents incredible government interference in the practice of medicine.'

It is high time to corner McCain and Palin on the South Dakota initiative, pin them down as to whether or not they support it.

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Jesus' General

Sen Coleman and the gift of pants

http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2008/10/sen-coleman-and-gift-of-pants.html

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John McCain, how low can you go?
 
How's that smear campaign working out?
 
Latest Gallup poll: Obama 51%; McCain 42%.
 
 
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Bush's legacy of debt
 
As further proof that our country has shifted from exporting goods to exporting debt, the national debt clock in Times Square has run out of room for the full amount that is now in excess of $10 trillion. They'll have to put up a new clock next year with extra digits.

Recall in September 2000, during President Clinton's last year in office, the National Debt Clock had the reverse problem. It was shut down because "it started ticking in the opposite direction, shaving off roughly $30 a second."

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CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO– Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER — What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW — The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use.

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Nearly one in six American homeowners owe more on a mortgage than the home is worth, raising the possibility of a rise in defaults — the very misfortune that touched off the credit crisis last year. So many homeowners "under water" is "likely to mean more eventual foreclosures" and increased pressure on an economy already in a downturn.

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In August 2007, Sen. Obama was asked whether he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq and deploy them elsewhere. Obama's reply: 

We've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.

In recent days, the McCain/Palin smear campaign has been criticizing Obama's remarks, saying they were dishonorable, reckless and hurt our cause. 

Flashback to McCain's 2000 presidential bid when he said virtually the same thing about the military:

"In the most obscene chapter in recent American history is the conduct of the Kosovo conflict when the president of the United States refused to prepare for ground operations, refused to have air power used effectively because he wanted them flying — he had them flying at 15,000 feet where they killed innocent civilians because they were dropping bombs from such — in high altitude."

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Accountability is for suckers

Mr Mooselini has learned well from corpulant antichrist Karl Rove:

Todd Palin {who was SUBPOENAED a few weeks ago} will answer a series of questions from a legislative investigator by mid-week -- but only in writing, and with the answers funneled through his lawyer, the McCain-Palin campaign said Monday.

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