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October 31, 2008
The Sarah Palin plan for victory.
Step 1: go batshit crazy.
In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
And then he's gonna walk the Earth.
In the second appearance by a Pulp Fiction alumnus here this week, Samuel L. Jackson makes the case against Prop. 8:
Damn right. Donate here.
October 28, 2008
The Internets has officially been perfected.
Further improvement of the Information SuperOhBoy is impossible, for it now contains LIVE STREAMING PUPPIES, WITH SOUND.
Oh my god, they just moved around again.
Looks like I won't be putting dinner on the table tonight.
Via the indispensable Slog.
Please keep this in mind.
Or, in the immortal words of Mr. Harvey Keitel:
October 27, 2008
Raiding party.
We fed the bees this morning, and apparently a nearby hive caught a whiff of the big bag o' sugared water inside Chez Arcwelder.
Everyone wants a piece of this action, and let me tell you that the battle going on at the front door is ferocious. Yet I sat 10 feet away snapping photos, and these girls didn't give two shits.
That's what I call (compound) eyes on the prize.
The will to freedom.
Remind me not to adopt a beagle. This is some champion-level persistence, and worth watching.
Via Andrew Sullivan.
October 26, 2008
For he's been to the bowling alley.
Frank Rich of the NY Times writes a hell of a good essay. Yesterday he advanced an argument against the perception that U.S. Whitey is racist:
As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.That includes acknowledging that the so-called liberal media, among their other failures this year, have helped ratchet up this election cycle’s prevailing antiwhite bias. Ever since Obama declared his candidacy, the press’s default setting has been to ominously intone that “in the privacy of the voting booth” ignorant, backward whites will never vote for a black man.
A leading vehicle for this journalistic mind-set has been the unending obsession with “the Bradley effect” — as if nothing has changed in America since 1982, when some polls (possibly for reasons having nothing to do with race) predicted erroneously that a black candidate, Tom Bradley, would win the California governorship. In 2008, there is, if anything, more evidence of a reverse Bradley effect — Obama’s primary vote totals more often exceeded those in the final polls than not — but poor old Bradley keeps being flogged anyway.
So do all those deer hunters in western Pennsylvania. Once Hillary Clinton whipped Obama in the Rust Belt, it’s been a bloviation staple (echoing the Clinton camp’s line) that a black guy is doomed among Reagan Democrats, Joe Sixpacks, rednecks, Joe the Plumbers or whichever condescending term you want to choose. (Clinton at one low point settled on “hard-working Americans, white Americans.”) Michigan in particular was repeatedly said to be slipping out of the Democrats’ reach because of incorrigible racism — until McCain abandoned it as hopeless this month in the face of a double-digit Obama lead.
In Defense of White Americans (Frank Rich, NY Times)
October 25, 2008
You're only a terrorist if she says you're a terrorist.
That Bill Ayres guy? Oh sure, yah, definitely a terrorist.
People who bomb abortion clinics and or kill the people who work there? Not so much:
Brian Williams: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition?Sarah Palin: (Exasperated sigh.) There’s no question that Bill Ayers by his own admittance was one who thought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There is no question there. Now others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to, I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word "terrorist" there.
Here's one more verbatim Palin quote. It purports to be a criticism of plans for a second economic stimulus package in Congress. Consider it your weekend puzzler:
I say, you know, when is enough enough of taxpayer dollars being thrown into this bill out there? This next one of the Democrats being proposed should be very, very concerning to all Americans because to me it sends a message that $700 billion bailout, maybe that was just the tip of the iceberg. No, you know, we were told when we've got to be believing if we have enough elected officials who are going to be standing strong on fiscal conservative principles and free enterprise and we have to believe that there are enough of those elected officials to say, 'No, OK, that's enough.'
October 24, 2008
Death-ray and Pouchy to the rescue.
Come November 5, maybe they can go into the demented-superhero business.
Photo via BKH.
October 21, 2008
He couldn't, uh, disagree with the agreeing.
Whoa, how do you steer this thing?
UPDATE: Could this be the explanation?
October 20, 2008
Cardboard's out. So are cardboard derivatives.
Bryan Dawe and John Clarke, date unknown.
Via The American Caliban.
October 19, 2008
2 minutes and 53 seconds of common fucking sense.
Hats off to you, Mr. Colin Powell.
October 18, 2008
Where principles go to die.
Joe Klein has a fascinating story up at Swampland about a man named David Ifshin, a man named Bill Ayers, and a certain Navy pilot forsaking his integrity:
Ifshin, you see, had been a vehement anti-Vietnam radical. He had even gone to Hanoi at the height at the war and given a speech denouncing the American pilots dropping bombs on North Vietnamese civilians as “war criminals.” The speech was broadcast repeatedly in the Hanoi Hilton, where McCain was being held captive. More than a few people thought Ifshin was guilty of treason.
After McCain was tortured and broken by the North Vietnamese and signed a confession of “criminality,” he was so ashamed that he attempted suicide—and later made a vow that he wouldn’t question the decisions or statements made by anybody else about the war. And so, when he arrived in the U.S. after his released and was asked about the antiwar protesters by Life magazine, he refused to condemn them. He kept to this policy, more or less, until 1984 when, as an ambitious young politician, he was asked by the Reagan campaign to deliver a speech slamming one of Walter Mondale’s top advisors—his campaign counsel, David Ifshin—for going to Hanoi, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy during wartime.
McCain gave the speech but, he later told me, felt great remorse about it. “I didn’t know the guy. I’d never met him,” he told me.
McCain and Ifshin met the following year at the annual AIPAC convention in Washington—and there is some disagreement what happened next: Both men later told me that the other initiated the conversation by apologizing. “McCain said, ‘I’m sorry I gave that speech. I didn’t even know you,’” Ifshin told me. “And I said to him, ‘You’re apologizing to me?’ I’ve been wanting to apologize to you for years. I feel so terrible about that speech I gave in Hanoi.”
The two became fast friends...
And when David was diagnosed with cancer, John McCain was there for him. And when David died, McCain gave one of the eulogies at his funeral. His voice broke when he said, “David taught me a lot about the meaning of courage.”
...I’ve told this story many times, especially to veterans groups, because it says so much about the importance of forgiveness, of reconciliation. But, in the heat of the campaign, I’d forgotten about it…until the past weeks, when Obama’s passing relationship with the radical Bill Ayers—not nearly as close as McCain’s friendship with David Ifshin—became news, and has been relentlessly exploited by John McCain and his campaign, most recently in robo-calls that flagrantly distort the nature of Obama’s relationship with Ayers.
If you want to know why I—like so many others—held John McCain in such high regard for so long, it had a lot to do with David Ifshin. And if you want to know why my opinion of him has plummeted, it has something to do with William Ayers.
"McCain's Radical Pal" (Joe Klein at Swampland)
Open for business.
The bees arrive tomorrow, and their home (dubbed "the Indie-Rock Hilton" by The Fine Lady) is ready for them. We can't wait to establish another outpost of Urban Beekeeping.
Another day, another speech to 100,000 people.
Damn, St. Louis—way to show up for your man.
Mr. Obama gave a striking sign of his electoral muscle when he arrived here Saturday morning and journeyed to the city’s Gateway Arch on the Mississippi River. He saw 100,000 people spread out before him, a vast turnout in a state that teeters between Republicans and Democrats.Even Mr. Obama, who can wear self-possession like an overcoat, seemed taken aback.
“What a magnificent day the Lord has made,” he said. “And thank you for being here today.”
“Whoo! I am on a high to see so many people of so many colors,” said Nicole Brown, a young black woman who lives St. Louis. “I mean, I’m anxious — is this real?”
And no day is complete without an appearance by Caribou Barbie:
As Mr. McCain did in North Carolina, Ms. Palin repeatedly invoked “Joe the Plumber.”“So when he left Joe’s neighborhood in Toledo, our opponent didn’t look real happy,” said Ms. Palin, referring to Mr. Obama. “Seems that the staged photo op there got ruined by a real person’squestion!”
Ms. Palin, as has become her custom, did not take questions from either the crowd or reporters.
October 17, 2008
More fun in Palinworld.
Joe Killian, a blogger for the Greensboro News-Record in North Carolina, was at a Sarah Palin rally yesterday where some pro-Obama demonstrators got tossed out by police for yelling during HockeyMom's speech:
N&R political reporter Mark Binker and I were on different sides of the crowd - but we both got the same reaction from Palin fans as we craned our necks to see what the disturbance was.“That’s not the story, the story’s up there on the stage!” someone yelled at Binker.
“Ain’t nothing to look at and don’t you write about it!” I was told.
After the speech, Killian walked among the competing factions outside the stadium, and things really got interesting:
I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.
“Hey, hey,” I said. “I’m trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay?”
The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.
This was met with curses, screams and chants of “U.S.A” by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.
It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.
“Oh, you think that’s funny?!” the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. “Yeah, that’s real funny…” he said.
And then he kicked the back of my leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.
Killian's colleague Mark Binker expands on the story.
Via Ben Smith at Politico.
She'd send in the army.
In an online discussion held yesterday, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported that the McCain campaign has somehow persuaded Sarah Palin's Secret Service detail to bar reporters from interviewing her supporters:
...I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they've started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty -- protecting the protectee -- and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it's unfounded because the reporters can't get close enough to identify the person.
Imagine what this bunch would do if given real power. Looks like all that time spent near Russia taught Caribou Barbie even more than we thought.
Via Andrew Sullivan.
October 16, 2008
The only debate recap that matters.
The Onion continues to rule.
October 15, 2008
Blinky McGrumperton's ship continues to sink.
You are GOOD, people. On the night Barack Obama sealed the deal, you've brought Misanthropes For Obama 90% 100% of the way to our fundraising goal.
Now let's get it over the top keep building it.
Several of you contributed because you wanted to hear the Sarah Palin joke that tops all other Sarah Palin jokes, and you've been amply rewarded. Have you not heard it yet? Then contribute, and the bounty shall be yours.
Some debate reactions, first from the NY Times:
...Mr. McCain began to undercut his own effort to paint Mr. Obama as just another negative politician. Mr. McCain grew angry as he attacked Mr. Obama over his ties to William Ayers, the Chicago professor who helped found the Weather Underground terrorism group. Suddenly, Mr. McCain was no longer gaining ground by showing command on the top issue for voters, the economy; he was turning tetchy over a 1960s radical...There were several moments when Mr. McCain’s tactics and tone appeared not to help him. During a discussion of angry comments at rallies, Mr. McCain chose not to disavow such remarks, but rather to say “categorically, I’m proud of the people who come to our rallies.” He then noted that big rallies tended to attract “some fringe people.”
...Mr. McCain was more animated Wednesday night than he had been at the two other debates, though not always to his benefit in the split-screen presentation of television. His voice turned edgy at times, as when talking about Obama campaign attack advertisements, and his frozen smile and wide eyes — which blinked frequently and distractingly at times — seemed a little strange.
Crooks and Liars passes along polling results and video clips:
CBS poll of undecided voters:Who won the debate?
McCain (R) 22
Obama (D) 53
Shares your values:
Obama, Before the debate: 54
Obama, After the debate: 63
McCain, Before the debate: 53
McCain, After the debate: 56
Who won the debate?
McCain (R) 31
Obama (D) 58
Favorable/Unfavorable:
Obama, before debate: 63/35
Obama, after debate: 66/33
McCain, before debate: 51/45
McCain, after debate: 49/49
Even the Luntz focus group gives it to Obama:
Meanwhile, virtually the entire Frank Luntz focus group on Fox News, which was staged tonight in Miami, said that Barack Obama won the debate. Luntz termed it a "clear majority," but not one person raised their hand when asked if they thought McCain won.
Signs, and how to read them.
The third and final presidential debate, with a focus on domestic issues, begins at 6pm PDT tonight.
And what did the market do today?
If I happened to believe in an omnipotent universe-creating super-being who gives two shits about our daily doings here on planet Earth, I'd have to conclude that she's a very strong Obama supporter.
By the way, I'm halfway through a correspondence between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan on "God, faith, and fundamentalism", and it's a great read.
And please, people—you know that you can give $10 to Misanthropes For Obama. So do it.
Way to go, Ohio.
Al Jazeera English didn't have to work particularly hard to make the citizens of our heartland look like a bunch of fearful, ill-informed simpletons. There's no need to take these folks out of context or edit their dialogue—and that makes any news producer's job a good deal easier. Thanks for the image boost, St. Clairsville!
Some background and a transcript are on Daily Kos.
October 14, 2008
Kicking ass where the Sun Shines.
Our friend Anne sends word from the electoral trenches of the state that could be key to a sweetly lopsided Obama victory. Not that we're getting overconfident, mind you—in fact, if you haven't already, donate to Misanthropes For Obama before reading further.
Here's Anne:
I just want to update you all on the state of the nation in sunny florida--i have just finished my first day of getting out the duval county dem newsletter, lots of white haired grannies and grampies in the office this time around. can't keep up with the folks coming in for Obama/Biden bumper stickers, buttons and yard signs. i have my 'O and Joe' sticker on the cadie and Obama button on my wallet. like Don Quijote I go forth. lets hope its not a repeat of 2000. we still have a republican secretary of state, yikes. and we still have those diebold voting machines. double yikes. thank god the schleping seems to be working in the Jewish community. Hooray for both sarahs, one who encouraged and one who scared the living bejesus out of a lot of people. Even good ol' Charlie is heading for the hills. love you all, gotv mom
And here's her response to a friend who made the mistake of forwarding an ObamaScare chain e-mail:
I remember when everyone was afraid to vote for a Catholic. Then JFK was elected and it is a non-issue now. In my own family when my Catholic mother and Episcopalian father married, Great aunt Mary was sure that they would all be murdered in their beds and voiced her opinion to one and all.
We are now in the silly season when everyone is afraid to vote for a scary BLACK man with a scary name. doesn't matter how qualified he might be. the American melting pot story is also the America where we women were not allowed to vote till 1920, and the America where the black vote was suppressed in the deep south until relatively recently. we need to vote smart this time. this is not the election to vote for ron paul etc in my humble opinion. 8 years of the Bush agenda and 12 years of Republican control of congress has gotten us where?????. Fear gets us nowhere. and I often wonder why folks do not consider him white since he has a very white Kansas born mother, grandmother, grandfather etc.
Whoever gets elected to do the peoples business needs to get us back on track and get rid of the deficit. Republicans are not too good in that area. tax cuts are great but spending needs to be decreased in the same ratio. we need to have a country run like a household without credit cards. Right now we are selling off the United States one piece of property at a time to foreign investors. and god help us if the treasury notes held by China, India and the Soviet Union are ever called in.
McCain is a demogogue who graduated at the bottom of his class, screwed around on his first wife with multiple bed partners including his present wife cindy. he brings nothing to the table other than a notorious temper in and out of the senate and a huge ego who relies on the pow story to answer all questions. If Guiliani was a noun, a verb and 9-11, than McCain has been a noun, a verb and Pow. Heard that somewhere, but how fitting.
I respect your right to vote for your choice whether it is republican, democrat or libertarian, however i know your smart enough to smell bullshit. anne
October 13, 2008
I love the smell of Republican panic in the morning.
Right-wing bloviator Bill Kristol, who fearlessly champions wars (as long as he and his friends are safely out of harm's way) caught one whiff of Misanthropes For Obama and began a panicky search for the campaign reset button:
It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign.He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.
Of course, Kristol can't resist squeezing in some of his favorite talking points/fairy tales: the media is evil (one assumes he excludes himself, for some reason), McCain is actually a centrist, Sarah Palin is smart and competent.
But the panic is right there in big bold letters. He and the rest of the Republican Media Elite are desperately casting about for a new sales pitch, and you know it's late in the game when they're falling back on this one:
[McCain] can point out that there’s going to be a Democratic Congress. He can suggest that surely we’d prefer a president who would check that Congress where necessary and work with it where possible, instead of having an inexperienced Democratic president joined at the hip with an all-too-experienced Democratic Congress, leading us, unfettered and unchecked, back to 1970s-style liberalism.
Oh no! The 1970s! I guess Kristol is making his own grudging steps toward progressive thinking—he's moved his Bogeyman one decade forward. Onward in triumph, Billy me boy.
October 12, 2008
People Who Are Annoyed By People Are My Favorite People.
It's time for all of my fellow misanthropes who've been watching this election from the sidelines to get in the game. We've been cursing the political conditions in our country for the last eight years, wondering how the nation that spawned Mark Twain, Jackie Robinson, and Dorothy Parker (not to mention Merv Griffin and Fannie Flagg) could produce the dim incuriosity of George W. Bush.
Well, now our man Barack Obama is staying cool and calm in these crazy times while John McCain shows what a reckless president he'd be as he makes one flailing, desperate course change after another. And need I mention Sarah Palin?
The momentum favors Obama, but that just means that the other side will pull out every attack strategy at their disposal in these final days. Are you ready to help?
Then it's time for you to visit Misanthropes For Obama, and join the final push toward Our Nation Getting Smart Again.
Visit soon. Visit often. Give until it hurts. You'll be glad you did.
Oh, you've already given? Great. Give again. You know it's the right thing to do.
All donors become eligible to hear, direct from me, the harshest and most spot-on Sarah Palin joke ever. Pony up some cash and collect your reward.
Wall o' Walla.
We hit southeastern Washington a couple of weeks ago to watch two friends get married. Along the way we found an excellent Mexican restaurant in the middle of fucking nowhere, enjoyed a post-nuptuals party at a small-town restaurant/bar that would be a worthy addition to any big city, and saw some crazy wide-open spaces.
Speaking of marriage and what a fine thing it is, please get your ass over to the No On 8 campaign, and give them some money. In fact, give them twice as much money as you initially thought you might, because the forces of bigotry are turning out to be surprisingly stubborn—and willing to say just about anything to scare people.
These are tough times, I know. But kick down a little corn to keep the equality train rolling. It's good for all of us.
October 11, 2008
As the clock runs out.
I remember stories like these at about this stage of the campaign in '92 and '96 (here's one, in fact). We didn't get to see them in 2000 or '04.
Now they're back. Happy Saturday.
Republican leaders across the country said Saturday that they were worried that Senator John McCain was heading for defeat unless he brought stability to his presidential candidacy and settled on a clear message to counter Senator Barack Obama.
In interviews, Republican leaders said Mr. McCain appeared to be flailing in trying to campaign against the backdrop of an economic crisis on Wall Street and seemed uncertain about how tough to be in taking on Mr. Obama.
Again and again, party leaders said they were concerned that the race was slipping away and that Mr. McCain and his advisers seemed to be adrift in dealing with an extraordinarily challenging political battleground...
“I think you’re seeing a turning point,” said Saul Anuzis, the Republican chairman in Michigan, a state Mr. McCain pulled out of last week. “You’re starting to feel real frustration because we are running out of time. Our message, the campaign’s message, isn’t connecting.”
...The difficulties of the McCain campaign have lead some Republican leaders to express concern that he could end up dragging other Republicans down to defeat, if he ends up losing by a significant margin.
“If Obama is able to run up big numbers around the country, the potential for hurting down-ballot Republicans is very big,” Mr. Anuzis said.
One sign of that has emerged in Nebraska, where Representative Lee Terry, a Republican, ran a newspaper advertisement featuring words of support for him from a woman identified as an “Obama-Terry voter.”
"G.O.P. Officials Hope for Stability From McCain" (NY Times)
October 10, 2008
Credit where it's due.
A more honorable John McCain, the man we knew some years ago, made an appearance today. He's known to work the phone constantly, talking to friends from his many years in politics. No doubt some have told him that he'd better tamp down some of the rabid hatred he's fomenting before his legacy turns to pure 100% poop.
This clip is aptly named: "McCain Tries to Tame Flames He Earlier Fanned."
Eli Sanders of Slog puts it well:
The key for Republicans, for many many years, has been to keep these sorts of conservatives out of sight—or at least keep them quiet when cameras are around. Now that they know they’re McCain’s only hope, they won’t be silenced.
Screwed, blued, tattooed.
Released on a Friday evening, of course, in an effort to minimize the damage. My guess is that the damage is done.
October 09, 2008
Ignorant, angry, and loving every minute of it.
Check out the Cro-Magnon characters the McCain/Palin rallies are bringing out of the woodwork. We know these people are always around, but they don't usually all turn up in one place where anything consequential is at stake.
Notice that McCain doesn't bother trying to dispute any of the rabid, bilious idiocy that gets the crowd on its feet; he just reverts back to his bromides.
Ben Smith at Politico:
That new mood is, I think, a reaction to a new fact about the contest: There's a strong, strong assumption across party lines that Obama is going to win. Intrade, a fairly reliable metric of convention wisdom, puts the odds at 75 percent. Behind the scenes, few Republican operatives think McCain will pull it off. Some Republicans are starting to make the case that a few years in the wilderness are just what the party needs, and that the presidency amid this economy is a poisoned chalice in any case...But the sense that his presidency is imminent appears, to some minority of Republicans, to be essentially unacceptable. Whether because of his views, his race, his life story or his partisan affiliation, Obama doesn't fit their model of a possible president of the United States. And so there's a new urgency to the reaction against him.
Andrew Sullivan takes it more seriously:
McCain and Palin have decided to stoke this rage, to foment it, to encourage paranoid notions that somehow Obama is a "secret" terrorist or Islamist or foreigner. These are base emotions in both sense of the word.But they are also very very dangerous. This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies - not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.
For God's sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.
At least John Weaver, McCain's former top strategist, is talking a bit of sense:
People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological...and from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive...As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.
If you've read the profile/evisceration over at Rolling Stone, you may agree that John McCain and grace in defeat don't appear to go together.
Is McGrumpy losing even the American Taliban?
Timothy Egan, writing on his NY Times blog:
Here in Colorado Springs — the Vatican of evangelical political power, home to the Air Force Academy and a community where optimism usually matches the sunrise glow at the base of Pikes Peak – you can see what will happen in less than a month.My friends: it’s not good for Senator McCain.
“As a small business owner, it’s very hard to watch a lifetime of hard work and savings just wither away in the last two weeks,” said Jan Martin, a native of this more-than-mile-high city, and a lifelong Republican. “The debate on Tuesday night has, if anything, bolstered my opinion.”
So Jan Martin, who also serves on the city council, will cross party lines in less than a month and vote Barack Obama for president, she said. She’s not leaving the Republican party – she’s deserting the nominee.
"My Own Private Focus Group" (Timothy Egan at NYTimes.com)
October 08, 2008
Marsupial vs. Mammal.
Only one made it out of this cage match alive, and—I'll give you a hint—he's up in our tallest Eucalyptus tree right now.
Painful, followed by strange.
Ben Smith at Politico links to two worthy video clips.
Norm Coleman is an incumbent Republican Senator in Minnesota, currently trying to fight off a challenge by Al Franken. Here's Coleman's campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, pretty much taking the Fifth Amendment under questioning from a ridiculously polite press corps:
And now John McCain, campaigning in Pennsylvania with Caribou Barbie at his side, singing the praises of his fellow, um, who?
October 04, 2008
When greed met panic.
Here's an interesting window on some of the galloping greed and panic-driven decisions that helped push not only the Federal National Mortgage Association (aka Fannie Mae), but the entire financial system into the abyss.
And as a bonus, it features an appearance by everyone's favorite creepy, over-tanned über-capitalist nightmare, Countrywide Financial's chairman/CEO Angelo R. Mozilo—here meeting with Fannie Mae chief executive Daniel H. Mudd:
Shortly after he became chief executive, Mr. Mudd traveled to the California offices of Angelo R. Mozilo [pictured above], the head of Countrywide Financial, then the nation’s largest mortgage lender. Fannie had a longstanding and lucrative relationship with Countrywide, which sold more loans to Fannie than anyone else.But at that meeting, Mr. Mozilo, a butcher’s son who had almost single-handedly built Countrywide into a financial powerhouse, threatened to upend their partnership unless Fannie started buying Countrywide’s riskier loans.
Mr. Mozilo, who did not return telephone calls seeking comment, told Mr. Mudd that Countrywide had other options. For example, Wall Street had recently jumped into the market for risky mortgages. Firms like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs had started bundling home loans and selling them to investors — bypassing Fannie and dealing with Countrywide directly.
“You’re becoming irrelevant,” Mr. Mozilo told Mr. Mudd, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting who requested anonymity because the talks were confidential. In the previous year, Fannie had already lost 56 percent of its loan-reselling business to Wall Street and other competitors.
“You need us more than we need you,” Mr. Mozilo said, “and if you don’t take these loans, you’ll find you can lose much more.”
Then Mr. Mozilo offered everyone a breath mint.
Pressured to Take on Risk, Fannie Hit a Tipping Point (NY Times)
October 02, 2008
Watch a young tyke's head nearly explode.
I generally despise watching children pretend to be grownups in the service of comedy—it's clumsy, embarrassing, and undignified for both the kids and the adults who put them up to it.
So this clip is all the more impressive in avoiding those pitfalls. This kid is very good, and whoever directed him got the tone just right. Nicely done, people.
I'm deeply thankful that they left out the loofah part.
Via Slog.
October 01, 2008
Is this over yet?
Sarah Palin is so intellectually outmatched by Joe Biden that holding a debate between them borders on the absurd.
McCain's handlers demanded a limit on interaction between these two during their face-off tomorrow night, and Obama's team is looking very wise for accepting; an aggressive anti-thinker like Palin can easily derail a conversation into near gibberish, making her opponent look as bad as she does. A simple contrast like this gives you all the information you need:
