[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5BnCEPr7cU[/youtube]
I found this one myself. Thanks again to a Liberal Drinker, I’ve got someone in reserve for next week.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Precocious Youngster Sells Cookies To Buy Attack Ad
UPDATE: For reasons I can’t understand, this video does not appear at all on my wife’s computer. She uses Firefox. I have no problem with Safari.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
John McCain said a lot of dumb things last night, and a lot of what he said has been scrutinized, deconstructed, debunked, and otherwise destroyed. I haven’t noticed that anyone picked up on this gem:
We need to encourage programs such as Teach for America and Troops to Teachers where people, after having served in the military, can go right to teaching and not have to take these examinations which — or have the certification that some are required in some states.
(Transcript of debate can be found here)
Now, I know we’re supposed to worship the troops and all, but surely I’m not the only one who thinks this suggestion is bat shit crazy, and I don’t care who else supports it, even if Obama is one of them. McCain criticizes the quality of education in this country, and then suggests that we privilege unqualified people to get precedence to teach in our schools, just because they’ve been in Iraq. Since when does being a soldier qualify anyone to be a teacher? If we don’t require teachers to pass those elitist “examinations” or get those snooty “certifications” (my recollection is that McCain said those words dismissively) how precisely are we to get people who are qualified to teach? Maybe this type of thinking is a byproduct of his personal belief that his own psyche scarring experience as a POW somehow makes him more qualified to be president than someone who has not been traumatized. Or, maybe it’s just consistent with the right wing belief that we should be teaching mythology and not facts, so that anyone will do, the more unqualified the better. Whatever the reason, this proposal makes no sense. There was a time when we looked on the military as a necessary evil. During Vietnam we unfairly maligned the military for the sins of their civilian bosses. Now, to atone for the sins of the sixties (this won’t stop until the last hippie dies) we nearly deify them, except when it comes to actually funding the programs they deserve. McCain’s proposal is so absurd that it’s almost comical, but we will hear nothing about that fact from either the media or the Democrats, because stating the obvious would be an unfair attack on the sacrosanct “troops”.
UPDATE: I am informed by a reliable source that the Troops to Teachers Program does not actually allow a returning soldier to go into teaching without getting proper certification. So this is just another example of McCain’s abysmal ignorance. Nonetheless, the fact that he’d be in favor of the program as he envisioned it speaks volumes about his qualifications to be President. I wouldn’t let someone who thinks like that on a local school board. The truth is that the Republicans have nominated two people to the highest offices in the land, neither one of which is qualified to be President.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IS0PJdE0Cs[/youtube]
Thursday, October 16, 2008
I agree with Atrios that this is unfair, but it’s too funny not to pass on. Probably everyone in the world has seen these already, but like fine wine they get better with age.
Click on images to make them bigger. I posted them small to avoid distortion.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
One and all are invited to join us here at Groton Democratic Headquarters (where I am right now) tomorrow night for the third and final debate. We are located at 303 Route 12 in Groton. Look for the GEICO sign.
This one should be interesting. McCain has promised to go negative to Obama’s face. How will that come across? And does McCain really want to open himself up to questions about a guy with whom he’s a lot closer:
William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Sarah Palin is campaigning in Pennsylvania and is denouncing the “unconscionable voter fraud” going on in Pennsylvania. While the media is dutifully running with, and misrepresenting the story, it is an issue unlikely to have much resonance with the voters, particularly coming from the representatives of a party that is widely suspected of stealing the 2000 election, and about whom a good argument can be made that it stole the 2004 election as well. It sounds a bit like sour grapes in advance, doesn’t it?
The actual story is a non-story. The evidence for the accusations of voter fraud is so weak that Republican U.S. Attorneys refused to prosecute, which led to the firings and the U.S. Attorney scandal that erupted recently. There is nothing in the newest charges that would lead any reasonable person to believe that the current charges are just more of the same.
Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but I suspect this line of attack is intended to lay the groundwork for a court challenge to the election results if McCain makes it close enough to enable them to pass their own laugh test, which may not be much of a test. I don’t think many non-lawyers understand just how lawless the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore was. There is simply no reason to believe the court would not grasp at any legal theory, however implausible to do it again.
UPDATE: As Josh Marshall says, the purge is beginning. And McCain is laying the groundwork for a Florida challenge:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6c12Of-lH0[/youtube]
John McCain is so eager to latch onto each anti-Obama right wing meme that he doesn’t stop to consider possible boomerang effects.
The latest non-issue working the right into the lather is Obama’s association with ACORN, a community organizing group that, among other things, tries to register low-income voters. Unfortunately, the group pays the folks gathering the signature on a per-signature basis, which is like an open invitation for them to cheat, which they do. This, by the way, is a far cry from voting fraud, since there’s no evidence that any of the fictitious registrants actually turn up to vote, and apparently ACORN takes steps to weed out suspicious registrations. In any event, per usual, Obama’s ties to the group are not related to any of that, but it hasn’t stopped McCain from climbing on the anti-ACORN bankwagon.
But it turns out that by his own logic, McCain is an ACORN fellow traveler:
The beleaguered Democratic-leaning community group Acorn sends over this photograph: John McCain, in March of 2006, sitting beside Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek at an event Acorn co-sponsored in Florida.
The immigration event, which other photos show was packed with red-shirted Acorn member, was co-sponsored by the local Catholic Archdiocese, the SEIU, and other groups.
McCain, still spiting much of his party on immigration at the time, was the headliner.
Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s chief organizer, said in a statement that came with the photo, “It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans.”
”We are sure that the extremists he is trying to get into a froth will be even more excited to learn that John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with ACORN, at an ACORN co-sponsored event, to promote immigration reform,” she said.
Of course, we have now entered a surreal period in the campaign where up is literally down, so the McCain campaign will no doubt blithely ignore his hypocrisy and continue to try to tar Obama for this association with a group that is doing nothing wrong.
If you did a search for the word “Krugman” on this blog you’d find multiple instances. He obviously knows of what he speaks, and he’s been right almost all the time.
Now he’s won the Nobel Prize in Economics. It is to be hoped that a President Obama would tap him for advice.
I usually agree with Frank Rich, but I must humbly beg to differ with his latest column. He makes the rather obvious observation that McCain’s current campaign tactics are bottomed in racism, though the McCain campaign would never be so tacky as to be explicit about it. Code is sufficient. But this brought me up short:
McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead.
This is a common line of argument in this country. I very much doubt that Rich personally knows McCain well, if at all. He is undoubtedly relying on the tattered remnants of McCain’s reputation for integrity. Implicit in the statement is the following argument: a person can act like a racist, or exploit racism, without actually being a racist.
I’m not sure I understand the distinction. McCain has made the conscious (presumably, unless he is actually fully senile) choice to act like a racist. If it walks like a duck, etc., it’s a duck, whether or not, deep in its heart, it insists it’s a goose. Didn’t Jesus say “By their fruits ye shall know them”?
The National Republican Party has built its electoral strategy on racism since 1968. Yet there’s not a one of them that will honestly cop to being a racist, David Duke excepted. The media has generally been wiling to give them each a free pass on this, as Rich has done for McCain.
