The McCain Presidency: Day One

Hilarious. And terrifying.

McCain's Economic Plan For Nation: ‘Everyone Marry A Beer Heiress’

McCain’s Economic Plan For Nation: 'Everyone Marry A Beer Heiress'

New Palin Interview With Marge From Fargo

Funny.

Art for Obama

Metrowest Daily News: Jim Walker
Artist Mike Mandel has created a seven and a half foot tall tile mosaic of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama in front of his home on Maplewood Street in Watertown.

Metrowest Daily News (Framingham, MA): Watertown artist creates Obama mural

Check out Mike Mandel's website, which has links to some of his other pieces in the righthand sidebar.

Video of Mike Mandel discussing his mural:

Watertown artist creates Obama mural from steve bagley on Vimeo.

Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in Lipstick

Keith Olbermann shows that Sarah Palin's handlers have put George W. Bush's deceptive words in her lipsticked mouth:



Winker/Wanker '08

Hit Him Again, Hit Him Again, Harder, Harder

New Obama ad on McCain's healthcare plan:



McCain's healthcare plan would be the largest middle class tax increase in history.

Jon Stewart on the Bailout

Clusterfuck to the Poor House.

A Few Laughs On a Fine Saturday

Winker/Wanker '08

The unholy triumverate.

HuffPo: Who is the Biggest Winker of Them All?

New Obama Ad: "Prescription"

This is a great issue to attack John McCain on. His health care plan is a joke, a gift to the greedy health insurance industry. How does a $2,500 tax credit help me, paying over $5,000 for health insurance this year (probably over $6,000 next year)? And he's going to tax what benefit I do get from my employer as income. And if he taxes benefits, taking away the tax benefit employers get for providing health insurance, that is the death knell of employer-provided health insurance.

The Perfect Marriage

They Think We're Stupid

NYDaily News: McCain's Latin American foreign policy experience, in 1957.

Miami Herald: Old flame cited as part of McCain's Latin experience

Sen. John McCain's senior foreign policy advisor cites a steamy romance 50 years ago with a Brazilian babe among the things that illustrate the candidate's decades-long interest in Latin America.

Speaking at an Americas Conference panel discussion Friday on the next U.S. president's Latin American policy, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine started out by mentioning an old Brazilian flame of McCain's, who recently emerged in the press.

''Talking a little about his personal experience, he was famously born in Panama and has traveled all over the hemisphere for many years.'' Fontaine said. ``In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed. She's a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sorta speaks to the long experience he has had in the region -- in the most positive terms.''

Hey, why didn't we elect Wilt Chamberlain President? He slept with 20,000 women, he must had had foreign policy interests all over the world.

Sheesh.

Are You Registered to Vote?

This is the time to check. Voter registration deadlines differ among states, and many end this week.

Check your state's voter registration deadlines, how to register, where to vote, etc., here.

You may have voted before, but the Republican National Committee is making a concerted effort to knock voters off the rolls. It's worth your time to check to make sure you are still registered.

In Montana the Republicans are challenging everyone who filled out a change-of-address card in the last 18 months in seven Democratic-leaning counties. If you've filled out a change of address card recently, go check your registration.

In Virginia, the Republicans are challenging college student's residency, asking for tax returns for registration, and warning students (falsely) that they will lose their financial aid or health insurance if they vote in Virginia. If you're a college student, go check your registration.

In Mississippi, a local election official purged 10,000 voters from the rolls from her home computer. If you are not on a first-name basis with your local election officials, go check your registration.

In Georgia, 700 voters were purged from the voter rolls even though many of those 700 had never committed any crime, never even received a parking ticket. If you've never committed a crime, go check your voter registration.

Don't the ratfuckers prevent you from voting.


Senator Edward M. Kennedy, dailykos: Are you registered to vote?

The McCain Campaign's Fatal Mistake

Pissing off David Letterman was a very, very stupid thing to do.

Some special messages from Sarah Palin:


Top 10 Messages on Sarah Palin's Answering Machine:


Bwahahaha.

No Comment

yahoo: Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin winks as she speaks during her vice presidential debate against Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Oops - "Famous Person" Loves Palin!

Actual shot of an McCain/Palin web ad this morning.

dailykos: Famous Person loves Palin!

(It was supposed to be La Nooners)

Gotta Run

yahoo: A 'Palin Bingo' card sits on a counter at a debate watch party at a tavern in Seattle Thursday evening, Oct. 2, 2008. People watched the televised debate there between vice presidential candidates Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden and filled out game cards based on comments made by Palin.
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

My real life keeps intruding on blogging!

Read elsewhere:

Palin screwed the pooch on the bankruptcy question last night. She said she and McCain weren't opposed to changing current bankruptcy laws regarding first mortgages. Problem? McCain does indeed oppose changing the law. Current bankruptcy law doesn't allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgage terms on first - primary - residences. But if you're a rich fuck like John McCain, bankruptcy judges have the power to protect your 2nd house, your 3rd house, your 4th house, your 5th house, your 6th house, your 7th house, your plane, your yacht -- but not the primary residence for millions of ordinary Americans. Palin basically adopted Obama's position in her answer, and McCain's camp is flailing. Smell the hypocrisy. Team of mavericks, my eye.

Washington Post reports that McCain has hired a new aide: Mark Buse, who was hired by Freddie Mac in 2003 and 2004 to lobby.....wait, this gets better....to lobby John McCain!

Jane Hamsher skewers Wrinkly/Winky '08:

She does not know what "achilles heel" means. Watch it. She Does. Not. Know. What. It. Means.

Forget the tight stripper skirt, forget the metallic eyeshadow inappropriate for anyone over the age of 40, forget the cloying sitcom delivery, the lies, the cruel and calculated needling of Biden by calling his college professor wife a "school teacher" and saying "she'll get her reward in Heaven" (to a man whose first wife died in a car accident) -- she's an idiot.

I cannot believe that we are seriously thinking of placing this dodo bird within reach of the Presidency.

Sarah Palin's 18 lies, from Americablog.

New Obama Ad: "The Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere" *Updated*

I jumped off the couch when Biden delivered that line last night. Great line, a huge weakness of McCain's that we need to exploit. McCain's healthcare plan would kill employer-funded health insurance -- and he has no back-up plan. We should all marry a beer heiress. Or get one of those (dwindling because of Republicans) good union jobs with good benefits.

UPDATE: My brother calls me to tell this story. He watched the debate with my three nephews last night. They all liked the "ultimate bridge to nowhere" line. The 9-year-old said, that was the best line of the debate, dad! And when said 9-year-old woke up this morning, he rolled over and said, "The ultimate bridge to nowhere."

My nephew is a political genius! The kid has a future in politics. He knows way more about foreign policy than Sarah Palin. He can name every country in Africa. I'd like to see those two debate Africa. My nephew would wipe the floor with her. Heck, he could wipe the floor with her in any debate. Being nine, he would take the cuteness factor off the table, and when you take away the winking and the folksiness, what does she have left? An empty dress, that's what.

Free Us From Health Insurance In Our Old Age

Larry DeWitt: Figure 2: Cover of AMA record album, author’s copy

The record the American Medical Association produced for its "Ladies Auxiliary Association" grass roots campaign to kill Medicare - 1961.

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic: Palin Channels Reagan

Palin's final quote was from Ronald Reagan, warning that without vigilance, "you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

In fact, Reagan was not warning about a general lack of vigilance about freedom, he was warning what would happen if Medicare was enacted.

Really, if you have a little time, read the entire Larry DeWitt piece. The right has always used folksy spokespeople -- like Sarah Palin -- to kill progressive legislation that would benefit actual folks.

Don't get fooled again.

Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink

Watched the debate tonight. Biden was great. The best I have ever seen him. I wish whoever prepped him for this debate had prepped him for the hearings on the last few Supreme Court nominations. He could have beaten Roberts & Scalito if he had been this focused and on-message.

Palin didn't have any horrible gaffes, but she was so weird. The cutesiness really puts me off. You're running for Vice President, not prom queen, for crying out loud. (I think this is why she does better with men than with women.) My mom called me after five minutes and said she just couldn't watch her any more. How can anyone take her seriously?

Jed Lewison notices the weird winking:



It was so obvious that she was just stringing together her talking points. She avoided several questions by giving answers about lowering taxes.

Biden's best moment for me was when he stated, then stated again, that what the US spends for three weeks of the Iraq War is the TOTAL of what we have spent on Afghanistan in the past seven years. While I think sending more troops to Afghanistan is insane, I think it is important to point out how far off track Bush & McCain sent the US after the 9/11 attacks, and how much money we are wasting on Bush/McCain's war of choice.

The worst moment for Palin for me was when Biden choked up talking about losing his first wife and daughter. It was the most emotional moment of the debate. And she stood there and listened to that and ignored it, went right back to her canned chirpy bullshit. A man had just stood next to her and relived a devastating loss -- his wife died, his daughter died, his two boys are near death in the hospital -- and she did not react. She did not care. To me that proved that she wasn't really there. She was reading her notes and reciting her canned answers, but she didn't even hear what Biden said. That was cold and uncaring. It made it pretty clear that Palin caring about Biden's son going to Iraq was a talking point. She didn't give a shit.

The post-debate polls are pretty uniform in giving the edge to Biden.