| November 21, 2008 |
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You need only one idiot photoshop to push into some goodothers.
Launch 3 missiles capable of crushing Israel: acceptable. Photoshop the release images: crap. And even if you can crush Israel, you look stupid.
I’m still scared because of Iran’s missiles and what that means for Israel and - by proxy - us.
Yay Photoshop!
I was reading this bit by Media Matters - one of dozens - that talk about… well:
On both his radio and television shows, Bill O’Reilly again cited Sen. Barack Obama’s ranking by the National Journal as the “most liberal senator” for 2007, without noting the rankings’ subjectivity. O’Reilly did not note that the rankings were based not on every vote cast by senators in 2007, but rather on “99 key Senate votes, selected by NJ reporters and editors, to place every senator on a liberal-to-conservative scale.”
Of course, O’Reilly also doesn’t mention that McCain didn’t earn a rating in this absurd, subjective exercise because he didn’t vote enough to be rated.
Every once in a while, I emerge from this haze of media anesthesia, this consistent lack of reporting all the facts - this thing that keeps Media Matters in business - and fly, burning-fisted into outrage: how can they do this? Why is no one doing anything about it? And just as my tornado inferno gets twisting, I collapse on myself, realizing that there are thousands of screaming voices - in the blogosphere. And because of how we humans are, my voice and thousands of others are shouting only to those who want to listen, and -by and large - are the other screaming voices.
People who need to hear that Barack Obama is not a Muslim don’t have a computer and won’t turn off Fox News.
And ignorance - not Fox and not talk radio - is our kryptonite: we have no defense and few effective ways to counter it.
Your thoughts?
Whatever you believe as a Democrat or Liberal, we need to not elect John McCain as a nation.
Check out this link to make a last-minute June donation to the DNC and derail the RNC next November.
Seriously. Now.
If you were trying to run the country, if you were going to personally see to it that bills were signed into law, wouldn’t you - perhaps - make an appearance at your current job that made those things happen in lieu of being the POTUS? Especially if that job was paid for by taxpaying Americans? McCain does not think so.
This is a couple days old, but worth a mention.
One of McCain’s top advisers, Charlie Black, said that a terrorist attack would be a “big advantage” to McCain’s campaign. This, of course, makes sense; if someone’s breaking into your house, you want daddy to come out with a baseball bat, not a diplomat. And John McCain seems willing to bomb the crap out of anyone.
McCain, of course, responded with “I cannot imagine why he would say it. It’s not true. I’ve worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear. I cannot imagine it, and so if he said that — and I don’t know the context — I strenuously disagree.” Ah, quoting doesn’t quite capture the stammering as well.
It’s a tough position: if he agrees, he appears monstrous for thinking such unthinkable thoughts; if he “strenuously” disagrees, it looks like posturing and naivete. I guess he opted for bullshit. Par for the course.
If early 1800s represented an Era of Good Feelings, our times should go down in history as the Era of Bad Feelings. Nowhere has that been better exemplified than in the current nastiness pervading the Democratic Party. Although Barack Obama has for all extensive purposes won the nomination, the forces of Hillary Clinton claim she deserves to be the candidate and that they would rather vote for someone else or not vote at all than vote for Obama. (more…)
This is my open letter to Senator Obama’s campaign staff and supporters, asking you to stop the madness and follow Obama’s mantra to “unify the party” and end “politics as usual”.
Republicans have tried to make political gains from the fact that we Democrats support the troops but do not support the Commander-In-Chief. Well, I support Barack Obama but, at the moment, I don’t support his “troops” - his campaign staffers and supporters, especially some of my friends in the blogosphere and the commenters in their blogs.
When it comes to Hillary Clinton, you have been making, and continue to make, the same mistake Republicans made throughout the 90’s with Bill Clinton. You are treating Hillary as if she’s some random public personality with no connection to friends and supporters who may be deeply offended by your outrageous insults and accusations. Much like we all treat Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan as a disconnected public personality, you criticize Hillary for her words, her clothing, her hair, her makeup, her family and more without any thought or caring as to how it affects her supporters, who make up nearly half of the primary voters, voters Obama will need to get elected. Some of you are the source of language like “monster”, “fucking whore”, “racist bitch”, and the C-word. Go to our Blogosphere page and select any headline that’s obviously anti-Clinton and you’ll find comments that include these outrageous insults, and some that cannot be repeated in this blog. And the endless debate about who dissed who first… will that help Obama’s movement?
Some of you have acknowledged Hillary’s supporters and admit there is “work to be done” to bring them over to the Obama camp; the white working-class and elderly women voters who have had a long-standing relationship with the Clintons. But many of you in the blogosphere and on cable news have decided to extend the insults to those supporters with language like “old, racist whores” and “Hillary’s getting the racist vote”. Rather than making an attempt to bring them into the Obama movement, you seem to have decided to prematurely reject them and destroy any possibility of merging the Clinton and Obama supporters, effectively handing their votes to McCain or throwing them away.
I live in Arizona where a large portion of the voters are elderly. Of those I speak with or read about, many in that age group do not vote for the party, they vote for the person. And they identify to people in their own age group, like the Clintons and McCain. I’ve heard many of you in Obama’s camp say that Hillary’s supporters will surely vote for Obama because it’s all about Iraq and Obama is their only possible choice. We’re talking about a generation that sacrificed financially, bought war bonds, and rationed through the Second World War. There were 1,076,245 US dead and wounded and 30,314 missing, so it was likely that they knew someone who was a casualty of that war. In contrast, the number of US dead and wounded in the Iraq War is around 44,321 - a terrible loss, but in a country of 300 million, much less likely they have a personal connection to the person lost. And Bush has asked for no financial sacrifice for this war, pushing the cost to future generations. So is the Iraq War really their main concern? Is it really all that likely that they will vote for a man whose campaign staffers and supporters are the source of outrageous insults, who arrogantly state they will have no choice but to vote for Obama?
A more likely scenario is that the Clinton vote will be split, with a portion going to Obama, a portion to McCain, some to Nader, and many who will just stay home. In fact, Obama’s nomination has completely changed the balance of power - he can no longer win without Hillary’s supporters. With so much on the line for our nation and the world, does it make sense to reject Hillary’s supporters out of an ongoing anger and defense of your candidate? Or does it make more sense to stop the endless insults, charges of racism, and 90’s-like Clinton-bashing, and make the effort to reconcile with Hillary’s supporters and persuade them to get behind the Obama movement?
My appeal to you is to make the effort. Start with the blogs supportive of Hillary or a supporter you know personally - an acknowledgement that the insults went too far and an invitation to join the Obama movement could make a real difference. Continue with the blogs or supporters you know personally that are against Hillary and persuade them to make an effort, as well. The stakes are too high not to make the effort.
I’m not joking.
Welcome to the nutter cavalcade. We have a dedicated blog, a Snopes post (false!), and even Glenn Beck, resident douchebag, is seriously asking the question.
Unmentioned at all sources: how the book of Revelation, source of Antichrist dogma, and readily accepted by many biblical scholars as an allegory of Roman oppression of Christianity, is even moderately equatable to modern times.
Halloween stories and fairy tales, and a little extreme in execution, but more examples - and I’m afraid we’ll find them a-plenty - of Ways Republicans Can Hate Barack Without Appearing Racist. They’ll probably have a book out soon.
(And, if so, however did Obama find them?)
Salon has a story about Barack Obama tearing Joe Lieberman a new one in person; while both are ostensibly Democrats, Lieberman is playing Jewish grandmother to John McLame’s campaign.
Katha Pollitt of The Nation on the benefits of Hillary’s historic campaign (sorry, but if you’re looking for yet another Hillary-bashing post, you won’t find it here):
Some think Clinton’s loss, and the psychodrama surrounding it, will set women back. I think they’re wrong. Love her or loathe her, the big story here is Americans saw a woman who was a serious, popular, major-party candidate. Clinton showed herself to be tough, tireless, supersmart and definitely ready to lead on that famous Day One. She raised a ton of money and won 17.5 million votes from men and women. She was exciting, too: she and Obama galvanized voters for six long months–in some early contests, each of them racked up more votes than all the Republican candidates combined. Once the bitterness of the present moment has faded, that’s what people will remember. Because she normalized the concept of a woman running for President, she made it easier for women to run for every office, including the White House. That is one reason women and men of every party and candidate preference, and every ethnicity too, owe Hillary Clinton a standing ovation, even if they can’t stand her.
There’s another reason to be grateful to her. Clinton’s run has put to rest the myth that we are living in a postfeminist wonderland in which all that stands in women’s path is women themselves. Like a magnet–was it the pantsuit?–Clinton drew out the nation’s misogyny in all its jeering glory and put it where we could all get a good look at it. “Iron my shirt” hecklers. Wearers of Bros Over Hos T-shirts and buyers of Hillary nutcrackers. Fans of the Citizens United Not Timid website (check the acronym). Vats of sexist nastiness splattered across the Comments section of hundreds of blogs and websites. It’s as if every obscene phone caller and every exhibitionist in America decided to become an amateur political pundit.
Thinking of Bobby Kennedy’s real passion during his ‘68 campaign for the American worker highlights exactly why our candidates - and our next president - needs to pay some serious attention to the plight of Americans, especially those of the working and middle class.
Yet everybody better start paying attention to the American worker, who is greater in debt (less and less see any relief from debt outside of bankruptcy or death), more likely to have to work two jobs or more just to survive, less likely to receive appropriate and timely health care, and under greater measures levels of clinical depression, fatigue, and stress than ever before. See my next (up) post.
New studies show Americans across the board (rather than pockets of wild wealth in a sea of people who have relatively little to nothing in comparison) are doing much worse financially than their European peers, AND that both our height and life expectancy is turning from new longevity to a shortening (yes, we’re living less longer and no longer growing as tall as our European neighbors, which is believed due to our harsh working schedule, bad diet, and far less accessibility to health care since most civilized nations have some type of universal access to care).
Oh, and our infant mortality rate is on its way back up. Not good.
Interestingly, the beginning of the “change” we’re seeing in less health for Americans dates back to about 1982. Hmmm… Reagan was in office, and advocating an economy that allowed for a handful of rich fatcats with the rest forced to buy his bumper sticker foreign policy. Much of the rule since 1982 has been Republican. Coincidence?
The media has waited with baited breath - and a volume of verbiage the world has rarely seen outside of coverage of Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears’ crotches - for Hillary to do her concession bit and for the two to hug and cry together. But they’re not giving that to us - at least, not yet. And either way, it’s OK.
I don’t want this to be a presidency driven solely by sound bytes and carefully crafted media images. I don’t expect two people who’ve fought so hard for their own campaigns (or the myriad thousands who’ve labored for them) to sudden love each other and make nice.
I don’t want Hillary Clinton named VP (and I think any announcement there will come much closer to the convention, if not at the convention itself in late August in Denver) simply because she was “the other candidate.” If there’s a better person for the Obama Democratic ticket, then I want that person considered. We’re not into legacies here, unless it’s the legacy for ALL of America, and not for a relatively privileged few (named Bush or Clinton or Kennedy, et al).
But what we need most of all is for the American people to unite in an understanding that the way ahead is tough regardless of how we go: that we may have to accept a period of increased hardship to try to get this nation - and the world that watches it - back on track. We’re already hurting; we can probably survive a little more.
And unlike the Bush-McCain technique, we need to take care of America’s working and middle classes through good education, job training, health care, and so much more. The Bush-McCain technique is to give and give to the wealthiest, and the rest have to wait til it trickles down the inner leg of the fatcat Republican peeing gold.
Caroline Kennedy has been named to head up a three-person VP search team for Democratic presumptive nominee, Barack Obama.
This differs from George Bush’s 2000 VP search team, headed by Dick Cheney, with only Cheney serving as membership, and - surprise! - decided Dick Cheney would be the best candidate for the job!
But does anyone worry with as much as Cheney is smirking and still acting like cock of the walk that you wonder if HE knows something (like what really went on with September 11th and Iraq, to name but a few) you don’t, which is why he’s not worried about having to leave the WH anytime soon.
When I awoke this morning, I felt different. It took me an hour or two to figure out why: we don’t have to talk about Democratic Primary races anymore because they ended yesterday.
While I found this primary season more interesting than any other in my lifetime, the drama wasn’t so much in what the candidates said or did, and certainly not in the debates (which I find useless when you’ve got 8-10 people vying for questions from a potential 300 million member audience).
No, the big change - the refreshing air - is not just that we’ll be Bush-less (we hope) come January 20th next, but that we went through a primary season where a woman and a black man got all the attention. I never expected to be half way through my life before this happened, so I’ll focus on how wonderful it is now that it’s here.
And it’s not any woman, not any black man. While Obama found privilege, it certainly wasn’t awarded to him by society. He - and his wife, and I think Michelle Obama is great - worked damn hard for all they have.
And while it’s easy to dis Hillary (it seems), she’s been part of a wave of people who came of age in the 60s and 70s who, while making their own way, have contributed MUCH to the overall quality of life in this country and beyond.
So rather than feel just relief at no primary discussion today, I’ve got to appreciate that while the Republicans handed us the same old fat old white man (McCain), the Dems delivered at least some of the change we desperately need.
If you sneezed, you may have missed this really strange story in which writer Todd Purdum’s piece in the most recent “Vanity Fair” in which Bill Clinton not only gets fairly vitriolic about those who would sully he or his wife, but also suggests that Bill is getting pretty “wild” again. One actress noted in the article, Gina Gershon, is demanding the magazine print a retraction for suggesting she and Big Dog shared a pet motel together.
I just don’t understand the sleaziness of such a piece, especially given its timing. Of course, besides the obvious filth, there’s the old saying about the best way to hurt a woman is to bring up her husband’s transgressions, as in “she wasn’t woman enough to satisfy him”.
Now, there are legitimate reasons not to love Bill and/or Hillary. Few politicians make it past asst. dog catcher without having to sell a little soul.
But really, is their sex life any of our business? And would it be coming up if it wasn’t Hillary? And to have it delivered in time for what seems clearly a loss just seems like an editorial twist that was unnecessary, the kind of nastiness we expect from Rupert Murdoch but don’t appreciate proportionately more because it comes from the something of the left.
Hillary Clinton may not be conceding yet, but as predicted, Barack Obama - based on delegate counts - has just announted “I will be the nominee.”
I hate to bring up such a sad subject at such a tough time but, considering times don’t appear headed for wild wonderfulness any year soon and the subject’s too important to ignore, here goes:
With the hospitalizations of two of the Senate longest reigning Democrats, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who will be our new lions? Do we have any in the making?
Vermont’s newest Senator, long-time Socialist House Rep, Bernie Sanders is already proving to be a fire brand. But he arrived in the upper house a bit late. Wellstone is dead. Corzine, who showed promise, went to be governor of New Jersey. We’ll have to see if Hillary and Barack remain in the Senate after this year (some speculation has Hillary being handed the governorship of New York on a platter, but I’d love to see what resigned-gov Eliot Spitzer’s replacement, David Patterson as the state’s first leader of color, will do).
Have any contenders we should watch for?
Did you notice that just about every pundit tonight (ostensibly covering the final two Democratic primaries tonight but actually there for a wake to the end of a primary season the media seemed intent on ending before it hardly began) basically seemed fairly confused?
And that’s because there has been a mad, tempestuous dance going on between the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the media as to what was going to happen tonight. Around 8 PM Monday, the word was that Hillary pop-up roaster thermometer had gone off and that, rather than allow her challenger Barack Obama to declare victory, she would just spend a long time backing out the door from which she first entered.
As of now, it appears to continue. Technically, Obama has the delegates needed to win. He’s close on superDs depending on whose math you follow. And also technically, by suspending her campaign - formally or unannounced - Hillary still has a back door into the Dem National Convention and a Make Hillary Rise Like The Phoenix She Is effort could emerge.
I mean, stranger things have happened. I mean, there was Mike Huckabee’s weird cross-thing-in-a-Christmas-message ad and Chuck Norris following Huckafuck all over the place while the ditzy Bush twins can’t even commit to voting for McPain. And we had a media far more interested in whether Dennis Kucinich _thought_ he once saw a UFO than on any of his real political policies for America. And a media reporting a race between a white woman and a half-black male in a totally different way than they reported the race between waaaaay too many lame, fat, rich, can’t-wait-to-screw-us-anew white Republican males plus Ron Paul. And a media that started to ignore John Edwards the second he dared to suggest he wanted to be the president for the underpaid and underprivileged in this country as much as for its richest citizens.
Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president.
The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City. She will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, the two senior officials said, the campaign is over.
Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.
I like both Democratic candidates, and would vote for either in November. I guess that’s why I feel a sadness that this struggle is coming to an end for one. But my sadness is probably premature. There is a great deal of politicking to be done before the end of August.