McCain Delivers Gracious, Classy Speech

Alaska's largest newspaper endorses Obama

Alaska's largest newspaper endorses Obama
USA Today

ANCHORAGE (AP) — The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's largest newspaper, has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.
The newspaper said Sunday the Democrat "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 Daily News said since the economic crisis has emerged, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has "stumbled and fumbled badly" in dealing with it.

"Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown's root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it," the paper said.

The Daily News said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has shown the country why she is a success as governor. But the paper said few would argue that Palin is truly ready to step into the job of being president despite her passion, charisma and strong work ethic.

"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," the paper said.

"Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time," the paper concluded.

Palin's Daughter Expresses Her Attiude

Palin Livin' Large on the Taxpayer's Dime

I guess this is Sarah Palin's idea of an ordinary "hockey mom":

• Charging taxpayer's for her family's travel expenses
• Buying $150K of clothing from fancy East Coast clothing stores.
  

Palin the "Hockey Mom" Wearing $150K of Designer Labels Purchased by Republican Contributors

I loved this piece in the L.A. times which reports that while Sarah Palin bills herself as a simple small-town "Hockey Mom" she is wearing thousands of dollars of designer labels from Saks 5th Avenue, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, etc. I guess she really is an East Coast Elitist after all.


Sarah Palin's $150,000 Wardrobe Malfunction?

An excerpt:

So it seems you can take the girl out of the beauty pageant, but you can’t take the beauty pageant out of the girl.

Palin's clothes came from retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York, and expenses included nearly $5,000 for hair and makeup. Maybe this is actually her one-woman economic stimulus plan. Lord knows the retail sector needs it.

Still, voters must find it unfathomable for Palin, who has been presented as a woman “like us,” to spend that kind of money on clothes in these difficult financial times, to see her speaking so passionately about Joe the Plumber while plumbing campaign coffers for Valentino jackets and pencil skirts. And yet, they’ve eaten it up, tittering on chat sites about Palin’s Kawasaki eyeglass frames and her Naughty Monkey red peep-toe pumps.

McCain and Palin Incite Hate on the Campaign Trail

Sarah Palin Lies Again on Bridge to Nowhere, Earmarks

How to tell when Sarah Palin is lying? Her mouth is moving.

MSNBC Video on the Keating Documentary

The McCain / Palin Campaign is beginning to show the desperation that comes from a team that knows that they are LOSING!

McCain Needs to Reign-In the Snarling Palin

John McCain's ads are LIES. Here's the video proof.

John McCain's ads are LIES. Here's the video proof.

McCain and Palin Enjoy "White Privilege"

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is:

• when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
• when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
• when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
• when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”
• being able to say that you support the words “under God”
• in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), you're a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.
• being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
• being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.
• being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives near Russia, you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.
• being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”
• being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
• when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.
• being able to give a 36-minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.
• being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.
• not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
• being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and Harvard Business School (George W. Bush), and still be seen as an "average guy," while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then Harvard Law, makes you "uppity" and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.
• being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.), and that's OK, and you're still cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office.
• being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you then go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly 20 years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."
• when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you may have sold drugs at some point.
• being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you dangerously naive and immature.
• being able to say that you hate "gooks" and "will always hate them," and yet, you aren't a racist because, ya know, you were a POW, so you're entitled to your hatred, while being black and noting that black anger about racism is understandable, given the history of your country, makes you a dangerous bigot.
• being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

How Racism Works Against Obama

I received this in an email from my friend Leza:

How Racism Works

--------------------
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
--------------------

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?

What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer
measured up to his standards?
--------------------

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain
killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
--------------------

What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5?

What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
====================

If these questions reflected reality, do you think the polls would be as
close as they are?

What is it that rationalizes and minimizes a black candidate's positive
qualities and qualifications?

You're The Boss ... which team would you hire with America facing historic
debt, two wars (to date), stumbling health care, a weak dollar, all-time
high prison population, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc?

====================
Educational Backgrounds

Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science; specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Pinocchio Politics - McCain and Palin's Lies

I came across a great new web site: Pinocchio Politics

Here's some great stuff from their "List of Lies" page:

World Wide Web of Lies

It's tough to keep up with the "blizzard of lies" coming from the McCain campaign, but here are a few sites that can help :

"Unraveling the myth of the Straight Talk Express"-- an Obama campaign memo, posted on the TIME Magazine site, lays out Myth & Fact in detail

McCain-i-pedia's "Count the Lies"

Politi-fact's "Truth-O-Meter"

LieCount - More GOP Whoppers

"Lies to Nowhere" -- Think Progress tracks all the lies about the Bridge to Nowhere.

We have an economic Crisis.

What's McCain's Response -Lie!

Our economy is in crisis and all John McCain can do is lie. He's making the totally false case that Barack Obama doesn't have a plan for the economic crisis. "Senator Obama," he says, "has still not offered any plan of any kind." In fact Obama has offered a plan. And its McCain that has been notably short on details on how he would handle this crisis.

Palin & McCain Resort to More Swift-Boating Lies

Sarah Palin has been learning from her mentor John McCain about how to spread lies and smears about their opponent, taking a page from the Bush-Rove-Swift-Boating-Playbook.

Why would they do this? Because they are scared - they know they are LOSING!!

As Yahoo News reports:

While it is known that Obama and Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood, served on a charity board together and had a fleeting political connection, it's a stretch of any reading of the public record to say the pair ever palled around. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts.

Nonetheless, Palin made the comments at two appearances in separate states.

"Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country," Palin told a rally of about 10,000 gathered at a tennis stadium in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles.

That echoed comments she made earlier in the day to donors at a private airport in Englewood, Colo.: "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Falling behind Obama in polls, the Republican campaign plans to make attacks on Obama's character a centerpiece of candidate John McCain's message in the final weeks of the presidential race. Coming late in the campaign, Palin's remark could be particularly incendiary, however, and could knock Obama off his focus on the troubled economy.

MSNBC adds:

At issue is Obama's association with Ayers. Both have served on the same Chicago charity and live near each other in Chicago. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s, the event cited by Palin.

In February, Obama strategist David Axelrod told the Politico Web site: "Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school. They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

But while Ayers and Obama are acquainted, the charge that they "pal around" is a stretch of any reading of the public record. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts. Obama was 8 years old at the time the Weather Underground claimed credit for numerous bombings and was blamed for a pipe bomb that killed a San Francisco policeman.

At a rally in North Carolina, Obama countered that McCain and his campaign "are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance." The Democrat described the criticism as "Swiftboat-style attacks on me," a reference to the unsubstantiated allegations about 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry's decorated military record in Vietnam.

Why do I say that they are losing? I'll write more in my next post.

Airhead Palin as VP - that is TERRIFYING!

Sarah Palin is an Airhead Beauty Queen!

She couldn't win the Miss America contest with this lack of substance. And the GOP thinks she should be VP? If McCain wins, we are in BIG trouble!

Tina Fey IS Sarah Palin!

Tina Fey is uncanny in her impersonation of Sarah "Airhead" Palin!

Maureen Dowd raises tough questions about Sarah Palin

Maureen Dowd of the NY Times compares Sarah Palin to Eliza Doolittle and raises some questions that Sarah Palin should have to answer in her column titled ...

My Fair Veep
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 9, 2008, NY Times
WASILLA, Alaska

For example:
• What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?

• Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn't all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?

• What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs -- as mayor and as governor?

• When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?

• Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?

• Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter's pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?

• As Troopergate unfolds here -- an inquiry into whether Mrs. Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law -- it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the FBI?

• Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants as well as on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian?

• Does she talk in tongues or just eat caribou tongues?

• What does she have against polar bears?