Showing posts with label George Bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Bush. Show all posts

Sunday

It Still Felt Good the Morning After

This bears repeating:

It Still Felt Good the Morning After


Published: November 9, 2008
Frank Rich

Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy. We felt good not only because we had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic. Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place — in cities all over America.

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.

So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

The most conspicuous clichés to fall, of course, were the twin suppositions that a decisive number of white Americans wouldn’t vote for a black presidential candidate — and that they were lying to pollsters about their rampant racism. But the polls were accurate. There was no “Bradley effect.” A higher percentage of white men voted for Obama than any Democrat since Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton included.

Obama also won all four of those hunting-and-Hillary-loving Rust Belt states that became 2008’s obsession among slumming upper-middle-class white journalists: Pennsylvania and Michigan by double digits, as well as Ohio and even Indiana, which has gone Democratic only once (1964) since 1936. The solid Republican South, led by Virginia and North Carolina, started to turn blue as well. While there are still bigots in America, they are in unambiguous retreat.

And what about all those terrified Jews who reportedly abandoned their progressive heritage to buy into the smears libeling Obama as an Israel-hating terrorist? Obama drew a larger percentage of Jews nationally (78) than Kerry had (74) and — mazel tov, Sarah Silverman! — won Florida.

Let’s defend Hispanic-Americans, too, while we’re at it. In one of the more notorious observations of the campaign year, a Clinton pollster, Sergio Bendixen, told The New Yorker in January that “the Hispanic voter — and I want to say this very carefully — has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Let us say very carefully that a black presidential candidate won Latinos — the fastest-growing demographic in the electorate — 67 percent to 31 (up from Kerry’s 53-to-44 edge and Gore’s 62-to-35).

Young voters also triumphed over the condescension of the experts. “Are they going to show up?” Cokie Roberts of ABC News asked in February. “Probably not. They never have before. By the time November comes, they’ll be tired.” In fact they turned up in larger numbers than in 2004, and their disproportionate Democratic margin made a serious difference, as did their hard work on the ground. They’re not the ones who need Geritol.

The same commentators who dismissed every conceivable American demographic as racist, lazy or both got Sarah Palin wrong too. When she made her debut in St. Paul, the punditocracy was nearly uniform in declaring her selection a brilliant coup. There hadn’t been so much instant over-the-top praise by the press for a cynical political stunt since President Bush “landed” a jet on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in that short-lived triumph “Mission Accomplished.”

The rave reviews for Palin were completely disingenuous. Anyone paying attention (with the possible exception of John McCain) could see she was woefully ill-equipped to serve half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. The conservatives Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy said so on MSNBC when they didn’t know their mikes were on. But, hey, she was a dazzling TV presence, the thinking went, so surely doltish Americans would rally around her anyway. “She killed!” cheered Noonan about the vice-presidential debate, revising her opinion upward and marveling at Palin’s gift for talking “over the heads of the media straight to the people.” Many talking heads thought she tied or beat Joe Biden.

The people, however, were reaching a less charitable conclusion and were well ahead of the Beltway curve in fleeing Palin. Only after polls confirmed that she was costing McCain votes did conventional wisdom in Washington finally change, demoting her from Republican savior to scapegoat overnight.

But Palin’s appeal wasn’t overestimated only because of her kitschy “American Idol” star quality. Her fierce embrace of the old Karl Rove wedge politics, the divisive pitting of the “real America” against the secular “other” America, was also regarded as a sure-fire winner. The second most persistent assumption by both pundits and the McCain campaign this year — after the likely triumph of racism — was that the culture war battlegrounds from 2000 and 2004 would remain intact.

This is true in exactly one instance: gay civil rights. Though Rove’s promised “permanent Republican majority” lies in humiliating ruins, his and Bush’s one secure legacy will be their demagogic exploitation of homophobia. The success of the four state initiatives banning either same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions was the sole retro trend on Tuesday. And Obama, who largely soft-pedaled the issue this year, was little help. In California, where other races split more or less evenly on a same-sex marriage ban, some 70 percent of black voters contributed to its narrow victory.

That lagging indicator aside, nearly every other result on Tuesday suggests that while the right wants to keep fighting the old boomer culture wars, no one else does. Three state initiatives restricting abortion failed. Bill Ayers proved a lame villain, scaring no one. Americans do not want to revisit Vietnam (including in Iraq). For all the attention paid by the news media and McCain-Palin to rancorous remembrances of things past, I sometimes wondered whether most Americans thought the Weather Underground was a reunion band and the Hanoi Hilton a chain hotel. Socialism, the evil empire and even Ronald Reagan may be half-forgotten blurs too.

If there were any doubts the 1960s are over, they were put to rest Tuesday night when our new first family won the hearts of the world as it emerged on that vast blue stage to join the celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. The bloody skirmishes that took place on that same spot during the Democratic convention 40 years ago — young vs. old, students vs. cops, white vs. black — seemed as remote as the moon. This is another America — hardly a perfect or prejudice-free America, but a union that can change and does, aspiring to perfection even if it can never achieve it.

Still, change may come slowly to the undying myths bequeathed to us by the Bush decade. “Don’t think for a minute that power concedes,” Obama is fond of saying. Neither does groupthink. We now keep hearing, for instance, that America is “a center-right nation” — apparently because the percentages of Americans who call themselves conservative (34), moderate (44) and liberal (22) remain virtually unchanged from four years ago. But if we’ve learned anything this year, surely it’s that labels are overrated. Those same polls find that more and more self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves Republicans. Americans now say they favor government doing more (51 percent), not less (43) — an 11-point swing since 2004 — and they still overwhelmingly reject the Iraq war. That’s a centrist country tilting center-left, and that’s the majority who voted for Obama.

The post-Bush-Rove Republican Party is in the minority because it has driven away women, the young, suburbanites, black Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, educated Americans, gay Americans and, increasingly, working-class Americans. Who’s left? The only states where the G.O.P. increased its percentage of the presidential vote relative to the Democrats were West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas. Even the North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the “real America” went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points.

The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.

So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.

Sarah Palin and the Apack of Lips






Can you believe this picture? 100,000 people showed up in St. Louis today to see Barack Obama speak. Wow. Shades of Lincoln.

meanwhile, Sarah Palin showed up on Saturday Night Live:


COLUMBUS, Ohio – After watching "Saturday Night Live" make fun of her from afar, Sarah Palin witnessed it first hand this week as Tina Fey engaged in fiction by depicting her at the news conference the Republican vice presidential nominee has yet to hold.

Later, Palin came on stage during the Weekend Update mock news segment and bobbed to the beat as cast member Amy Poehler performed a rap song the Alaska governor decided was too hardcore for her to perform personally.

"I'm Jeremiah Wright 'cuz I'm the preacher; I got a bookish look and you're all hot for teacher," Poehler rapped as actors dressed as Eskimos, Palin's husband, Todd, and a caribou pranced across the stage.

The appearance was anticipated since September, when Fey began portraying Palin just after GOP presidential nominee John McCain selected the little-known governor as his running mate. The two look alike, and Palin remarked that people often told her — before Fey started portraying her — that she resembled the actor.

In the show's opening, Fey's impersonation of Palin told a group of reporters, "First off, I just want to say how excited I am to be in front of both the liberal elite media as well as the liberal regular media. I am looking forward to a portion of your questions."

Moments later, the camera cut away to the real Palin watching a television monitor alongside the show's executive producer, Lorne Michaels.

"You know, Lorne, I just don't think it's a realistic depiction of the way my press conferences would have gone," Palin said. She said she wished he would have let her do a sketch about "30 Rock," the NBC program in which Fey now stars. That prompted Michaels to deadpan: "Honestly not enough people know that show."

Palin then stood mute as Fey's "30 Rock" co-star, Alec Baldwin came onto the stage, mistook Palin for Fey and pleaded with Michaels not to let the actor go onstage with the governor.

"This is the most important election in our nation's history and you want her, our Tina, to go out there and stand with that horrible woman?" Baldwin said.

When Michaels broke down and introduced him to Palin, Baldwin feigned embarrassment and replied, "I see. Forgive me. I feel I must say this: You are way hotter in person."

Palin got even by saying, "Thank you, and I must say, your brother Stephen is my favorite Baldwin brother."

The camera soon cut back to Fey who answered a question about the polls.

"I don't worry about the polls. Polls are just a fancy way of systematically predicting what's going to happen. The only poll I care about is the North Pole, and that ... is ... melting. It's not great."

The real Palin then walked onto the news conference set, sending Fey fleeing.

"Thank you, thank you," the governor said to applause from the studio audience. "No, I'm not going to take any of your questions, but I do wanted to take this opportunity to say, `Live from New York, it's Saturday Night.'"

It was not immediately clear if McCain, overnighting in Ohio, watched the show, but earlier in the day he told a crowd in Woodbridge, Va., that he thought Fey and Palin were "separated at birth."

Speaking of his running mate, he added, "I know she'll do a great job."

BUT THEN THEY RAN AN AD FOR OBAMA THAT QUOTED JOHN MCCAIN SAYING "I'VE VOTED OVER 90% OF THE TIME WITH GEORGE BUSH" - just devastating.

Look, I grew up in the 60's. As soon as you have a hero something bad happens to him (or her). I'm used to watching heroes disappear, and I'm not used to seeing them make it to the finish line. However, that being said, I'm hopeful that the country is going in the right direction. And just to make it seem all the more important and game changing than it already is, consider this;

If Gore hadn't lost the election (that he won) and if the Supreme Court hadn't handed Bush the election (which it did), then Obama would not be this close to being elected President. Only a sick economy and 8 years of an awful Presidency, could the country even consider voting for someone outside the paradigm. So consider for a moment thanking George Bush for being so awful, otherwise we'd be facing another four to 8 years of our national nightmare.

And the truth is, I enjoyed watching Sarah bop to the music on SNL - was she not aware of Amy P was singing, mocking her? Even if she was, she smiled gamely throughout, and remembered her chops as a weather lady. It just shows how adept she is at READING A SCRIPT, whether it's weather, or news, or what Karl Rove shoves under her nose. God bless her. I hope she stays on the national scene. But SNL was hilarious.. that rap song priceless. Good on ya Lorne.

My two cents

Thursday

What was Palin talking about???

"The fib I told was this big..."

So, reporters finally got a chance to lob some questions at Sarah Palin. I guess they showed enough deference, except perhaps this tricky one:

Palin was asked if she thought the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan was helping to mitigate terrorism.

"I think our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will lead to further security for our nation. We can never again let them onto our soil," she said.

Excuuuuuuuuuuse me? What Iraqi, what Afghani has ever been on our soil, other than the happy-to-meet-anyone-Bush-asks-me-to Hamid Karzai at the UN? I think she's not aware that it was 19 SAUDIS ARABIANS that were in the planes at the World Trade Center.

But then maybe she thinks they're one and the same; that we're fighting a war in Iraq to "go after those responisble for 9/11." What an ignoramoose!! (a genderless word by the way) We'll never know what McPalin knows, because she'll be President and running the country before we get a chance to ask the question.

My two cents

Tuesday

Bailout = Highway Robbery


I'll take time out from my McPalin bashing to kick the Bush administration. (Ooh! Only a few months of kicking left!!) When we hear that the government is "bailing out" Wall Street, we should all pay attention. This administration has been responsible, or ignorant of, some of the worst profiteering in the history of the nation. Bush & Friends asked for a blank check for the War in Iraq. A blank check paid for willingly by the nation... while the press sat on their hands. And now, hmmm, they're asking for another blank check. So far they've figured out the FEAR makes us docile, and willing to give up our checkbooks. But what happened to checks and balances? Why can't Congress take some time to see what the hell is under the hood of this massive semi the Administration is trying to sell us? Can't someone kick the tires? It's outrageous that the lies that led us into the war in Iraq have gone unpunished, or in most cases, unpublished. A liar comes along and says "Hey, ignore those other lies me and my friends told you, THIS TIME it's the truth." To paraphrase Mr. Bush; "Fool me once, I'm a fool. I'm ashamed to say that fool me twice, I should be ashamed of being ashamed." Gimme your dough before I go... Here's an article from Bill Greider at the Nation.

Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle
Friday 19 September 2008

by: William Greider, The Nation


Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses - many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public - all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics - exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, a brave conservative critic, put it plainly: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks."

A kindred critic, Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher in New York, defined the sponsors of this stampede to action: "Let us be clear, it is not citizen groups, private investors, equity investors or institutional investors broadly who are calling for this government purchase fund. It is almost exclusively being lobbied for by precisely those institutions that believed they were 'smarter than the rest of us,' institutions who need to get those assets off their balance sheet at an inflated value lest they be at risk of large losses or worse."

Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough - using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system. The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times. There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.

A serious intervention in which Washington takes charge would, first, require a new central authority to supervise the financial institutions and compel them to support the government's actions to stabilize the system. Government can apply killer leverage to the financial players: accept our objectives and follow our instructions or you are left on your own - cut off from government lending spigots and ineligible for any direct assistance. If they decline to cooperate, the money guys are stuck with their own mess. If they resist the government's orders to keep lending to the real economy of producers and consumers, banks and brokers will be effectively isolated, therefore doomed.

Only with these conditions, and some others, should the federal government be willing to take ownership - temporarily - of the rotten financial assets that are dragging down funds, banks and brokerages. Paulson and the Federal Reserve are trying to replay the bailout approach used in the 1980s for the savings and loan crisis, but this situation is utterly different. The failed S&Ls held real assets - property, houses, shopping centers - that could be readily resold by the Resolution Trust Corporation at bargain prices. This crisis involves ethereal financial instruments of unknowable value - not just the notorious mortgage securities but various derivative contracts and other esoteric deals that may be virtually worthless.

Despite what the pols in Washington think, the RTC bailout was also a Wall Street scandal. Many of the financial firms that had financed the S&L industry's reckless lending got to buy back the same properties for pennies from the RTC - profiting on the upside, then again on the downside. Guess who picked up the tab? I suspect Wall Street is envisioning a similar bonanza - the chance to harvest new profit from their own fraud and criminal irresponsibility.

If government acts responsibly, it will impose some other conditions on any broad rescue for the bankers. First, take due bills from any financial firms that get to hand off their spoiled assets, that is, a hard contract that repays government from any future profits once the crisis is over. Second, when the politicians get around to reforming financial regulations and dismantling the gimmicks and "too big to fail" institutions, Wall Street firms must be prohibited from exercising their usual manipulations of the political system. Call off their lobbyists, bar them from the bribery disguised as campaign contributions. Any contact or conversations between the assisted bankers and financial houses with government agencies or elected politicians must be promptly reported to the public, just as regulated industries are required to do when they call on government regulars.

More important, if the taxpayers are compelled to refinance the villains in this drama, then Americans at large are entitled to equivalent treatment in their crisis. That means the suspension of home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies for debt-soaked families during the duration of this crisis. The debtors will not escape injury and loss - their situation is too dire - but they deserve equal protection from government, the chance to work out things gradually over some years on reasonable terms.

The government, meanwhile, may have to create another emergency agency, something like the New Deal, that lends directly to the real economy - businesses, solvent banks, buyers and sellers in consumer markets. We don't know how much damage has been done to economic growth or how long the cold spell will last, but I don't trust the bankers in the meantime to provide investment capital and credit. If necessary, Washington has to fill that role, too.

Finally, the crisis is global, obviously, and requires concerted global action. Robert A. Johnson, a veteran of global finance now working with the Campaign for America's Future, suggests that our global trading partners may recognize the need for self-interested cooperation and can negotiate temporary - maybe permanent - reforms to balance the trading system and keep it functioning, while leading nations work to put the global financial system back in business.

The agenda is staggering. The United States is ill equipped to deal with it smartly, not to mention wisely. We have a brain-dead lame duck in the White House. The two presidential candidates are trapped by events, trying to say something relevant without getting blamed for the disaster. The people should make themselves heard in Washington, even if only to share their outrage.

--------

William Greider - National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and - due out in February from Rodale - Come Home, America

Monday

Pillars of Democracy


Why does the following film contest sound like nonsense? Can you imagine making an anti govt documentary about "democracy" (which I'll assume most of them would be) and getting a prize for it?

State Dept. seeks democracy videos

Government teams with media orgs on contest

The U.S. State Dept. has revealed its latest diplomatic tool: user-generated content. At the U.N. on Monday, representatives revealed the Democracy Video Challenge, a government initiative co-sponsored with half a dozen high-profile media orgs including NBC Universal, the DGA and the MPAA.

The challenge in question will be to create a three-minute video completing the phrase “Democracy is...” in hopes of receiving a prize package that includes set visits, tickets to the Universal Studios L.A. theme park, and meetings with everyone from U.S. government officials to “new-media experts.”

Rather than attempting to monetize the content, sponsoring orgs will contribute various prizes and incentives, including PSAs promoting the competish on NBC (NBC News correspondent Richard Engel also presided over the afternoon’s launch party).

James Glassman, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, said the initiative was aimed to “convene people for a conversation.” Glassman is a Bush appointee, but stressed that the initiative was thoroughly bipartisan and includes nonmedia sponsors like the Intl. Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.

The State Dept.’s Jonathan Margolis said he hoped that the contest would start “a dialogue on democracy” -- the prizes will go to regional winners from six different parts of the world, as well as one anonymous winner. Videos will be broadcast on YouTube. Entry deadline is Jan. 31.

Oooh! a Visit to a set!! (Fox news anyone?) Tickets to a studio tour!!! (Sign up here for propaganda, and you'll get free tickets to stuff we're selling you!!) Prizes will go to winners from six different parts of the world (can anyone spell Middle East? If they don't love us, let's have a contest so they can prove they love us! But then, you have to assume they like us enough to make videos praising our form of democracy with "Bombs From Above") and one "anonymous winner." Hilarious. Ya think Mr. Been Ladin' could even submit a video on democracy ("Democracy means never having to say you're sorry") or does this mean they have a ringer who's going to win anyway? Oy. What a country. What a concept!

Hmmm. A contest. With no cash prizes, but "prizes that we consider prizes." Sounds like the Bush description of the Economy. And if you don't agree with the govt's version of Democracy, (The VP pit bull Sarah Palin's version of Democracy, signing loyalty oaths, and harassing librarians, or ex brother in laws) you won't be put on the "do not travel" list. Even if you're Cat Stevens. Really.

So I went to the government website to see if they can define what "Democracy is." According to the website, there are "ELEVEN PILLARS OF DEMOCRACY. " (Why does this sound like the Seven Pillars of Islam? Just asking.) Here they are:

THE PILLARS OF DEMOCRACY
  • Sovereignty of the people.
  • Government based upon consent of the governed.
  • Majority rule.
  • Minority rights.
  • Guarantee of basic human rights.
  • Free and fair elections.
  • Equality before the law.
  • Due process of law.
  • Constitutional limits on government.
  • Social, economic, and political pluralism.
  • Values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise.
Okay. The first 8 seems to make arguable sense. Sovereignty is "the exclusive right to have control over an area of governance, people, or oneself. A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority." (wiki) An exclusive RIGHT to have governance over ONESELF. That sounds amazingly like Choice to me. And Gay Rights. And all the things this administration has flaunted or ignore for 8 glorious years.

A Guarantee of Basic Human Rights: Human rights refers to the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled."[1] Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education. (wiki)

Okay, now it's getting interesting. We know that Freedom of Expression isn't guaranteed by anyone, or you wouldn't be arrested for protesting in St. Paul. The right to food - Hmm.. not sure that's ever been enforced.. check out the food lines near your local shelter.. Right to work? I don't think so.. unless you're part of a govt. bailout - and the right to education... okay, it's all debatable. Some school systems seem like they're shelling out more rights than others, but again, debatable.

But now it gets interesting:
  • Constitutional limits on government.
  • Social, economic, and political pluralism.
  • Values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise.
Excuse me? There's no definition of democracy anywhere that includes these three lemons - put there by whoever wrote this paragraph at the State Gov website.. hmm, a loyalist no doubt. . There's nothing about Constitutional limits on Govt, except in right wing blogs and books that quote the State dept. idea of democracy. Economic and political pluralism? Values of cooperation and compromise? Says who? I defy anyone to find a reference to the source of where this information came from - it sounds, once again, like an administration who hires faith based candidates over secular ones, or hires people who can wash the science out of the truth to fit their own reality. Really, who writes this nonsense?

So, to all you would be filmmakers out there - good luck defining Democracy as the State Dept defines it!!! You're in for some real prizes. Either way, this disclaimer at the bottom solves it all:

This site is produced and maintained by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs.
Links to other internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views contained therein.

And on a final note - anyone catch McCain's daughter Meghan on Larry King tonight? A slight slip of the tongue where she said she was blogging about her father "The President." The bit about her being "obsessed" by Sarah Palin - c'mon, she's gotta be kidding. Her father only met her once before picking her and his daughter is "obsessed" by her? I'm sure Palin's kids are cute and wonderful.. but c'mon. "Impressed" I could believe. Obsessed sounds like a word that's been fed to Meghan.

I think Sarah's a creep, a bully, a hypocrite and a prevaricator of the highest degree - and the worst choice McShame could have picked for a VP. Notice these words are gender free. If it was about her being a talented women, there are many others with much more credits and service to the nation who should have been considered - but this is such a Karl Rove choice it's nauseating. And now she's refusing to answer questions about Troopergate, when it was the Republicans in Alaska who brought the charges. Obsessed? Oy. What a country. What a concept.

My two cents.



Friday

Sarah Palin is a Bad Disney Movie



Couldn't agree more. Great comment Mr. Damon. Bravo.

Sarah Palin is a bully. She lies, and then covers it up. (Watch the ABC interview - she can't admit she was "for the bridge and then against it." She admits it but won't admit it.) She's already abusing power, and she's only been in office a couple of years. Books banned from libraries. Advocating creationism. Demanding to erase choice as a woman's option, except in the case of her daughter.

Mark my words; the next time you see her daughter on stage with her "fiancee" she will be wearing a wedding band or fake engagement ring put there by the McCain campaign. Not an accusation - who cares? - just an observation.

Sarah Palin is a Bad Disney Movie. The past 8 years have been NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Lies about going to war, smearing CIA agents from the White House, from the Office of Vice President!! He should be charged with crimes against the Constitution. 8 years of BS.. I'm just sick of it. Enough is enough.

The country is going to be on the edge of its seat everytime John McCain coughs if he's President. A spot appears on his face, and people will be scrambling to build nuclear shelters. What's this country come to? We'll elect anyone because they believe in creationism? Because they go to Church? Because they have a sarcastic streak, and bully those who are beneath them?

Yesterday NPR reported she made employees sign a loyalty oath. That the librarian that she harassed out of her job, wouldn't sign the oath.

THAT'S WHAT A NAZI DOES.

We're at a crossroads in this country. We're nearly bankrupt. Our children's children will be paying the interest on the loans we took out to finance this ridiculous and unjust war. And now more men have died in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The just war, the war that went after the people responsible for 9/11, was shifted to another theater, making the victory in Afghanistan a hollow one. Why is that? It's because the WAR CRIMINALS IN THE WHITE HOUSE took their supplies and intelligence and men away from them so they could satisfy their own cravings for justice, to "spread democracy," to protect the oil supply - whatever it is, they're guilty of throwing our nation in front of a bus. And they're still war profiteering on it as they sail into the sunset.

If McCain had picked someone who wasn't a complete fake - after all, he spoke to John Kerry about being his vice president - if he had any balls, he would have done the same.. but by picking this Bad Disney scenario, he's lost any respect he had. And the world will treat him as they treated Bush - a dolt who doesn't know what he's doing.
It's so sad to see our nation divided once again, over culture wars. The right wing pretending to be blue collar, and the left wing pretending to be blue collar. When neither collar fits them. I'd throw my hands in the air, but when all is said and done, someone's got to go into the White House, and I'd prefer to bet my money on Obama and Biden to lead us into the future.. and not into a comedy from hell.

Wednesday

Sarah Palin is a bully

I frickin' HATE bullies.

Don't get me wrong. I liked her speech. I thought it was pretty funny. I thought she was pretty funny. Sarcastic. Dry.

I thought the pick by McCain was equally maverick like "I don't care what anyone says, this is my pick and I'm sticking to it" and creepy "Yes, Karl, whatever you say Karl, if that will get me elected I'll pick anyone."

I think John McCain is either going Ronald Reagan on us, in the mind dept., or he's a liar. Check out Greenberg's new film on the subject.



But Ms. Palin is a bully. She's a bully with librarians. She's a bully with her inlaws. She's a bully with anyone who disagrees with her. Hmm. She'd make a perfect Mrs. Cheney.

America likes bullies. They like to elect creeps. Just look at the creeps we've had in office. Nixon. Bush Jr. Cheney. And now they're going to vote for McCain because he picked Palin. As Ariana Huffington so aptly put it; "America loves a soap opera." Well we've been living in hell for 8 years with this dimwit in the White House and his team of fascist commandos - and now we're supposed to sit back and let it happen again. Man it makes me nauseous.

But as Senator Obama put it today "Enough is enough." I'm fed up with it. So hence the title of this blog. I don't think McCain would be an awful President. I think Bush is awful. But I think Palin would make an awful President. And that's what will happen if we elect him. So get out your checkbooks America, and pop some cash into Obama's campaign; he's going to need it for all the sleaze and crap they'll throw at him.

I frickin' hate bullies. And hate hypocrisy in Govt, and in our leaders. Hate it. Hate it.

Thank God for Jon Stewart.

Okay, this is my clarion call. Onward and upward.

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