October, 2008 archive

Anchorage Daily News endorses Senator Obama:

Gov. Palin’s nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency — but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain.

Since his early acknowledgement that economic policy is not his strong suit, Sen. McCain has stumbled and fumbled badly in dealing with the accelerating crisis as it emerged. He declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” at 9 a.m. one day and by 11 a.m. was describing an economy in crisis. He is both a longtime advocate of less market regulation and a supporter of the huge taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout. His behavior in this crisis — erratic is a kind description — shows him to be ill-equipped to lead the essential effort of reining in a runaway financial system and setting an anxious nation on course to economic recovery.

Sen. Obama warned regulators and the nation 19 months ago that the subprime lending crisis was a disaster in the making.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

According to the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War* and Communism is dead, dead, dead.

Except when it isn’t.

_________________

*More likely, it happened to collapse under its own contradictions of history while he happened to be watching.

One can only hope.

Jon Swift has the answer.

“I thought they already made a movie called Ship of Fools.”

Just a cute little Josephine McCarthy:

It’s a Know Nothing thing.

The Demon Princess sums it up nicely:

Of course, the Bush administration is not entirely to blame for creating such a huge debacle–its roots go back to Mr. Morning in America himself, Reagan–but for perfecting it and taking it to its logical and disastrous conclusion, and consistently treating the federal taxpayers’ monies with an approach that amounts to “friends and contributors welcome to back the trucks up to the Treasury door and take it all away,” and to years of conservative think tanks, letting lobbyists write legislation and appointing foxes like Paulson to guard the henhouse, we have years of concerted and tireless Republicon efforts to thank.

(snip)

Face it, America–the worst President ever and his maleific friends have just succeeded in completely subverting democracy in the name of ‘capitalism’–except that, like everything else in this Administration, with its penchant for trying to convince us that up is down and other disingenuous misnomners, the fact is that ‘capitalism’ has somehow succeeded in privatizing profits and socializing losses, the precise opposite of what we all supposed it to be.

Via ASZ.

Dick Polman:

. . . One of the most prominent, of course, is his claim that the community group ACORN is “maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” There’s no need here to debate whether ACORN’s sporadic screwups during voter signup season actually constitute a clear and present danger to the body politic, since McCain’s hyperbole has already been dismissed by some noteworthy Republicans, including Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and his Republican secretary of state. Suffice it to say that, on the belly laugh scale, McCain’s heavy breathing about ACORN ranks just below Meg Ryan’s heavy breathing in the fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally.

James Tobin’s indictment really puts this ACORN episode into perspective – simply as a reminder that, when it comes to the actual practice of messing with actual signed-up voters on election day, nobody does it better than the backstage folks at the GOP. When one reviews the facts that underpin the Tobin story, the party’s fake tears about ACORN become all too apparent. So let us take a quick stroll down memory lane, to demonstrate how true fraud actually works, and how actual Republican operatives have recently served actual jail time for their crimes. It’s a story too few readers probably know about, and it’s all available in sworn court testimony.

I wasn’t there when she died, but I visited her frequently during the year in which her mind gradually left home.

Fortunately, I did not have to deal with heartless bastards questioning my motives:

Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Jerome Corsi suggested or asserted that the true purpose of Sen. Barack Obama’s current trip to Hawaii is not to visit his ailing grandmother, as Obama claims, but rather to address rumors — widely debunked — that Obama has failed to produce a valid U.S. birth certificate. However, in addition to FactCheck.org and a Hawaiian Health Department official, even Corsi’s employer, the right-wing website WorldNetDaily, has reportedly determined that the birth certificate provided by the Obama campaign is authentic.

Wingnuts–proof that it is possible to be sick, evil, stupid, and cruel, all at the same time.

Via Atrios.

Here.

In other news, NPR assembled a focus group of voters in York, Pa.

I listened to this report tonight. After stating that she was not voting for Senator Obama because she was afraid of how black persons would react if he won and following the obligatory disclaimer that “I am not prejudiced,” one of the persons interviewed came out with such a torrent of bigotry that I nearly choked.

And I’m sure she really believes that she is not prejudiced. I’ve only met one bigot–and, frankly, he was a really likable guy–who would look you straight in the eye and say, “I’m a bigot.”

It’s sort of like the panhandler who hailed a friend of mine on the streets of D. C. one day and said, “Can I have a quarter? I’m saying up for a bottle of wine.”

My friend gave him $5.00 for being honest.

Follow the link to listen to it yourself.

Don’t do it right after a heavy meal.