CT Blue

What sacrifices the great must make to their ambitions.Poor Mitt Romney has put two of his homes on the market, including the “cabin” in Utah, shown below.

Poor Mitt. He says he’s not unloading these hovels so he won’t have trouble in 2012 remembering how many houses he has. You can believe that if you like, but I submit that dog won’t hunt.

I have some news for Mitt. His presidential aspirations are only slightly less delusional than Jim Amann’s gubernatorial hopes. His careful cultivation of the lunatic fringe is now all for naught. Those are Sarah’s people now. Say what you will, she’s truly one of them, and not a possible closet moderate. Not only that, she believes like they do, in witches and creationism, but not, like Mitt, that Jesus and Satan were brothers¹ . Why cast your lot with a Mormon when you’ve got a genuine Christian crazy close at hand?

With Sarah capturing the nut vote Romney so assiduously courted, he’ll have to tack back toward the center. There’s a problem with that. First, there’s very little center left to the Republican party. Second, whatever moderates are left contain whatever intelligence is left in the Republican party, and they won’t cotton easily to a guy who changes opinions faster than a model changes clothes. Mitt could try to appeal to the corporate crowd, but their numbers are few, and given their probable on-going need for government bailouts, the all tax cut Republican dogma (you don’t pay taxes if you’re losing money) might not have the appeal it had in the past.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. All the newspapers endorse this time of year, and from what I’ve been reading on Editor and Publisher, Barack Obama is getting the lion’s share of endorsements. My readers have been literally (well, not literally…come to think of it, not even figuratively) swamping me with requests that I announce my endorsement for the highest office in the land. The suspense is killing them.

It’s true that I have said a lot of good things about Obama. But, other than the fact that I have hinted at times that I would sink into a clinical depression if he loses, I have not actually officially endorsed him.

The reason for this is that his opponent has qualities that must give one pause. He at least deserves some consideration. He has served his country long and, in the past, well. When he ran for president in 2000, I believed that a principled case could be made for voting for him, though I disagreed with those who made that case. He has been speaking out against the corporations, and has a long record of having opposed their interests and demanding stricter regulation of Wall Street. He is the original maverick, and has demonstrated in this election that he will stick to his positions even as his former supporters question his decisions and desert him in droves.

On the other hand, he supported Barry Goldwater in 1964. His decision making has been rather suspect. His running mate is a person of questionable competence and experience. Most of all, however, I still can’t forgive him for what he did to the country in 2000, and what he’s tried to do to it since then. At one time it appeared he genuinely cared about this nation, but lately it appears that he’d be more than willing to destroy the country in service of his own ego. When all is said and done, I simply can’t endorse Ralph Nader’s presidential run, so I am giving the CTBlue 2008 presidential endorsement to Barack Obama.

So, the suspense is over. Have a good weekend.

via Americablog, from the Obama campaign:

Indiana is not a very enlightened state, but it leads the nation in one respect: robocalls are illegal. If you want to spread slime, you have to hire real people to do it. The only trouble is that real people, even the poorly paid folks who really need the money they make in what must be a horrible line of work, have consciences, and there’s only so far you can push them:

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being “dangerously weak on crime,” “coddling criminals,” and for voting against “protecting children from danger.”

Williams’ daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it’s located in Hobart, IN.

…

“We were asked to read something saying [Obama and Democrats] were against protecting children from danger,” this worker said. “I wouldn’t do it. A lot of people left. They thought it was disgusting.”

This worker, too, confirmed sacrificing pay to walk out, saying her supervisor told her: “If you don’t wanna phone it you can just go home for the day.”

…

Representatives at Americall in Indiana, and at the company’s corporate headquarters in Naperville, Illinois, didn’t return calls for comment.

Obama should give these people an all expense paid trip to the Inaugural ball.

Yesterday, I posted about my foray into the world of right wing radio, and my astonishment that in these critical times, the intellectual underclass is more concerned about Obama’s birth certificate than financial meltdown, imperial madness, health care, global warming, or even their own pet causes like abortion.

I confess that the issue took me aback. I was vaguely aware that there were some right wing rumblings about Obama’s birth certificate, but they seemed so absurd on their face that I never paid much attention. Today a couple of things came across my RSS feeder, so I pass them on to my readers in case any of you have the occasion to disabuse anyone of the notion that Obama is not an American born.

First, I should say that one of the callers said that Obama had refused to respond to a lawsuit brought by a highly respected lawyer. Turns out the lawyer is Philip J. Berg, a former Pennsylvania deputy attorney general (don’t let the title fool you, every lawyer who works for the state in the civil area is a deputy attorney general. Many of them are every bit as incompetent and nutty as the random crackpot private practitioners one runs into now and then) who has brought several high profile frivolous lawsuits. His case was recently dismissed for lack of standing, but the facts are really not in dispute:

Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, and the campaign posted a document issued by Hawaii on its Web site, fight thesmears.com, confirming his birth there.

Berg said in court papers that the image was a forgery.

The nonpartisan Web site FactCheck.org examined the original document and said it was legitimate.

Further, a birth announcement in the Aug. 13, 1961, Honolulu Advertiser listed Obama’s birth there on Aug. 4. *

Even the wingnut Website WorlnetDaily has admitted the birth certificate is authentic, but that hasn’t stopped the vile Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Jerome Corsi from claiming that Obama recently went to Hawaii to cover up his true origins, rather than visit his dying grandmother. Precisely what he could do in Hawaii to effect the cover up is, of course, not explained. They moan about the fact that Obama has not “answered” the lawsuit, which he has not done because he has had it dismissed, as any responsible lawyer would have done.

I submit these facts to my readers only so that they will be better prepared than I, should someone bring up this particular piece of lunacy. Not, of course, that the facts matter to these people.

Note: I should clarify here that the show that I was on was not hosted by a right winger. My impression is that she is a no-winger, someone with no discernible political views. But the station’s political listenership is definitely right wing, and the folks my debate opponent encouraged to call (they were from all over the U.S.) were definitely of the thought-free stamp.

Frankly, I’m getting tired of reading about the election campaign. It’s actually beginning to look like opinions have hardened. Unless modern day polling techniques have gone off the rails, or the Republicans manage to steal it again, Barack Obama will be the next president. All we have to do is endure another week or so of ever more desperate and vile campaign tactics from McCain. Those tactics are becoming ever harder to take, as it becomes increasingly clear that the net effect will most likely be not a McCain victory, but a hardening of attitudes among the morons who populate the Neanderthal wing of the Republican party. At this point I just can’t get excited about discussing the latest McCain atrocity, like the disturbed young McCain campaign worker who tried to ignite racial tensions in order to get her man elected. I just want it over.

So it’s helpful to pause a bit, even now, to consider what’s happening. Our country has been so near destroyed by the Bush regime that it’s difficult for us to remember that our country has strengths that even Bush couldn’t destroy. Indeed, there are social trends that proceed apace, despite the best efforts of the Republicans to retard them. Keith Richburg, a black reporter for the Washington Post, recently penned a column for the Guardian, and he makes some interesting observations. He is stationed in Europe, and points out that an Obama could not happen there:

..[I]t’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a Barack Obama emerging in Europe soon.

One reason is that Europeans for the most part do not talk about race and race relations as openly as we do. In America, we wallow in it. We self-analyse and form committees, workshops and seminars to talk about it. There are countless organisations and associations dedicated to racial issues. Bookshops stack shelves talking about our racial history and problems. We take measurements of pretty much everything, from black student school test scores to minority living standards.

…

A year ago, no one here would have predicted that a black candidate would become the nominee of a major party and have a more than realistic chance of winning the White House on 4 November. And it’s a testament to Obama’s considerable skill that he has largely managed to make his race an afterthought. America is on the verge of something historic and it almost seems anticlimactic.

But black Americans are still pinching themselves, still not quite able to believe what has been achieved. And all Americans should pause from the heated political rhetoric and reflect on the sense of accomplishment, win or lose, that his candidacy represents – an affirmation of that American ideal.

It is worth remembering that, for every voter that refuses to vote for Obama because of his race, there are many for whom it truly is an afterthought, or, for that matter, a small bonus. I’m certainly not voting for Obama because of his race, but I’m glad our highly qualified candidate happens to be black. That’s one more landmark reached in our 400 year old struggle against racism. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime, and now it looks like it will. Thats something to think about and savor as we endure the foulness of the final days.