Sunday, November 2, 2008

Headlines - Sunday

 
 
Palin falls for prank call from fake French President: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbEwKcs-7Hc&eurl=http://www.americablog.com/ 
 
She had no clue she'd been punked until the very end, and it's clear from this exchange that she's yet another Republican narcissist for whom it's all about her. 

Sure, the call is funny, or would be if Sarah Palin were some mindless pop tart who makes millions lip-syncing and gyrating around a stage. But this is a woman who is practically frothing at the mouth to be President of the United States as if the title were something akin to Queen of the Biggest Prom in the Universe.

This is why if Barack Obama manages to prevail on Tuesday, we have exactly five minutes to celebrate before we get back to work. Unless the Democrats manage to either pull out a filibuster-proof majority or somehow find their proverbial nutsacks with both hands, the Republicans will pave the way for Queen Sarah I by blocking anything that Obama wants to do.

Maybe Republicans think this is amusing. Maybe they think that Sarah Palin's level of stupidity and willful ignorance is somehow charming. Maybe they're all a bunch of Rich Lowrys whose only fun in life is imagining that a 44-year-old ex-beauty queen is winking at them personally. But we are facing a future that's deadly serious, and this country can never, ever, ever be put in the hands of a woman who thinks stupidity is not only a virtue, but makes one somehow superior.
 
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Breaking the law for McCain

You may have noticed that the AP is reporting that Barack Obama's aunt (who he does not seem to have a relationship with) was denied asylum in the US four years ago and is now living illegally in Boston. Convenient timing, ain't it?

The real story, though, is down in the third paragraph of the AP story ...

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

That's about as transparent a red flag as an outfit like the AP is usually willing to give. And there you have it. Quite likely working in concert with the McCain campaign, a Bush administration official is leaking details on an immigration case to try to help McCain three days before the election. It's shades of Bush I's riffling through Bill Clinton's passport files just before the 1992 election in a desperate last minute gambit as they were swirling down the drain.

Note too that the story first got leaked to the Times of London, a Murdoch paper with a history of taking planted stories from Republicans for siphoning back into the US media.

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Never forget: John McCain is also related to a lawbreaker
 
While the right wing is screaming that Senator Obama's aunt has broken an immigration law, 23/6 would like to remind everyone that John McCain's wife Cindy broke a drug law, and we all know those are way worse. At least the criminal in Barack Obama's family isn't introducing him at campaign events.

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Your tax money at work. Goldman Sachs gets $9.8 billion bailout: pays out $11 billion in bonuses!
 
Don't forget: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. 
 
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Someone from the McCain camp must have had a pretty stern talk with former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. He just went on Fox with a bracingly abject apology for saying that Sarah Palin wasn't qualified to be vice president. So abject in fact that I must say that it had something of the feel of one of the Maoist self-criticism sessions or perhaps one of the public apologies during the Moscow show trials.                          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hgX0JLWE5c

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I want every Democrat in the country thinking like this.

Gov. Ed Rendell took to the stage of Lebanon Valley College's Miller Chapel last night as part of a final, weeklong effort to get out the vote for Sen. Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.

In a 40-minute address, Rendell urged supporters to not take Obama's current lead in state polls for granted and criticized Sen. John McCain for running "one of the most despicable, dirtiest campaigns in American history."

"I don't want to just win this election. I want to crush them," Rendell told a crowd of around 500 students, faculty and community members.

Me, too, Eddie. Me, too.  

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Batshit crazy levels are approaching saturation point.

In a statement today, (Nutbag 'attorney' Philip) Berg said he is applying to Justice David Souter for an "Immediate Injunction to Stay the Presidential Election of November 4, 2008."

"I am hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court will grant the injunction pending a review of this case to avoid a constitutional crisis by insisting that Obama produce certified documentation that he is or is not a "natural born" citizen and if he cannot produce documentation that Obama be removed from the ballot for president," Berg said.

Smell that? It's the smell of desperation. This last weekend should be extremely entertaining, at the very least.
 
Uh oh. Here comes the update: The state's Department of Health director released a statement verifying the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama birth certificate.
 
Sorry guys, it looks like Obama can run for president afterall. You could always go back to the "Bill Ayers wrote Obama's book" theme. Oh wait...
 
Don Millican of Oxford wrote a computer program which compares texts to see if they were written by the same author.  Robert Fox, a Republican, approached him to run Ayers bio and Obama's through the program.  A preliminary check made it seem very unlikely, and on being informed that a full check would cost $10,000, Fox wouldn't come up with the money.

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"John McCain is a man who has looked in the face of evil and not flinched...he's earned our support and confidence and the time is now for him to be our next president." Shooter
 
Face of evil 

McCain's fortunate that Dick Cheney hasn't been much of a topic in this campaign. That's why it's a little stupefying that Cheney would crawl out of his hole and make a public endorsement of McCain/Palin on the last weekend before the election. How does that help? It just opened the door for an Obama smackdown (via email):

Below is an excerpt from Obama's prepared remarks for Pueblo, CO

President Bush is sitting out the last few days before the election. But earlier today, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location and hit the campaign trail. He said that he is, and I quote, "delighted to support John McCain."

I'd like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn't come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington's biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney's support.

But here's my question for you, Colorado: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain's going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?

Colorado, we know better. After all, it was just a few days ago that Senator McCain said that he and President Bush share a "common philosophy." And we know that when it comes to foreign policy, John McCain and Dick Cheney share a common philosophy that thinks that empty bluster from Washington will fix all of our problems, and a war without end in Iraq is the way to defeat Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorists who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So George Bush may be in an undisclosed location, but Dick Cheney's out there on the campaign trail because he'd be delighted to pass the baton to John McCain. He knows that with John McCain you get a twofer: George Bush's economic policy and Dick Cheney's foreign policy – but that's a risk we cannot afford to take.

This is fun.

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If anyone you know still asks you why he or she should vote for Obama over McCain, show them this video, from the Canadian Broadcasting Company's documentary documentary The Bush Years.

In ancient Rome, and at other times in human history, rulers displayed the heads of their enemies after they had been executed. It is a particularly barbaric practice, and one much opposed by those on the right who recite endlessly that Muslims are barbarians because a few extremists cut off the heads of captured Westerners. Yet, here was the President of the United States of America, supposedly the most advanced and moral society in the world, ordering the CIA to bring him the heads of our enemies on ice so he could gloat over them like some demented feudal baron.

Forget for a moment the torture, the unlawful detainment of prisoners (most of whom we detained after we paid bounties to unscrupulous Afghans and Pakistanis without any evidence of involvement in "enemy combatant" activities). Forget the violation of our civil rights by the NSA's warrantless electronic surveillance, and the databases of potential "terrorists" filled with the names of antiwar group members compiled by law enforcement and the US military. Forget the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm and white phosphorus against Iraqi civilians. Forget the millions of Iraqi refugees displaced by Bush's war. Forget the plans that Vice President Cheney ordered the Pentagon to prepare for a surprise nuclear attack against Iran. Forget all that.

Just think on this. We had a President who was, in effect, an unaccountable warlord, ordering the decapitation of his enemies. The "leader of the free world" was a man every bit as barbaric as the worst Islamic jihadist. And McCain would continue those same policies which Bush put in place. He jokes about bombing Iran, as if the murder of innocent Iranian civilians would be not only an instance of acceptable, "collateral damage" but the height of hilarity.

The Republicans chose George Bush. And they chose John McCain to continue what Bush started. McCain, a so-called man of "honor" who has sullied his reputation forever by running an even nastier negative ad hominem attack campaign against his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, than Bush and Karl Rove ran against John Kerry in 2004. I cannot imagine a more disgraceful act on Tuesday than to cast your ballot for John McCain, the nominee of a party who, while they controlled Congress, enabled the most corrupt, the most power mad, and the most barbaric President in our history.

Bush wasn't just the "Decider" he was the "Decapitator" as well. And McCain hungers to be the "Mad Bomber" who wins the war on the noun "terror" by any means necessary, including the continuation of Bush's criminal policy of pre-emptive, aggressive wars of the President's (not the Congress') choice. McCain, a man with no principles left after he tossed all of his aside in pursuit of his ambition for higher office.

We can't afford another such person of low character to inhabit the Oval Office for the next four years. One has in his eight years in office disgraced our nation and brought it to the precipice of moral and economic ruin. Who knows what the next such person could do if we give him the opportunity?

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Nancy Greggs: We Have the Math

Because …

For every pseudo-Christian who has forgotten the importance of Being Thy Brother's Keeper, there are two people of true faith who remember that message – and have taken it to heart.

For every polluter and defiler of the planet, there are a dozen planters of new trees and devoted sowers of seeds – and they are determined to make the earth flourish yet again.

For every screaming bigot, there are a hundred people who speak of tolerance and acceptance of others – and they will make their voices heard.
 
 
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At a campaign event a couple of days ago, Schwarzenegger asked – because this is clearly the test of fitness for public office that all of need to ask ourselves – "If you were in a POW cell, with the threat and danger and torture as part of the daily life, who would you want in that cell with you? A man — you want a man of eloquence or a man of proven courage"?
 
Well Arnold, I would want to share a cell with a man of eloquence, because 5½ years can be an awfully long time stuck in a cell with a man telling jokes about women being raped by gorillas.
 
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Fun facts and figures from Presidential elections past.
http://distributorcapny.blogspot.com/2008/10/be-expert-by-tuesday-night.html
 
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Global recession causes massive factory closings in China: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/01/china-global-economy-dongguan 
 
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Republicon computer expert Mike Connell, who has been implicated as being at the center of vote fraud in Florida 2000 and in Ohio in 2004 has been ordered by an Ohio judge to appear for a deposition on Monday, the day before the election! This takes out one of the GOP's most important players at the most crucial time imagineable. The full story is available on The Brad Blog here.

It's looking very much like Karl Rove is going down with this one, too. The Republicons' attempts to disenfranchise voters and steal elections have finally led to some consequences. How sweet the taste!

Bon appétit!

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Bridge to No Underwear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPE6_jGBlDc&eurl=http://www.jedreport.com/

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Scandal of six held in Guantanamo even after Bush plot claim is dropped: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-scandal-of-six-held-in-guantanamo-even-after-bush-plot-claim-is-dropped-980264.html

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Huh?

Many soldiers in Iraq may skip vote, and some officers say they did not send in absentee ballots to underline their political neutrality. 

The number of absentee military ballots applied for that ultimately get counted is consistently low. In the last federal election, only about 30 percent of overseas military ballots were tallied, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission and the Pew Center on the States. 
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/01/national/main4562808.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._4562808

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