Few things have been more unsettling about our political discourse recently than the worship of Stupid on the part of the Republican Party. I'm all for cogent debate about ideological differences, economic policy and it's effect on the job market, the role of government and regulation in our society, but the embrace of mind numbingly idiotic ideas to turn voter frustration into votes is a reflection of how little the Republicans care about the greater good and how much they care about themselves and their corporate sponsors. To my added dismay, Nan Hayworth is a card carrying member of that club.
Perhaps no other policy position exemplifies the embrace of rock brained dumb more than the "privatization of Social Security." (Okay, climate change denying comes close.)
And a very Happy Valentine 's Day to all you lovers out there. That's lovers of things like music and politics and words and such. See, I tend to feel like Good Ol' Charlie Brown these past few Valentine's Days. I've been too focused on things like writing and thinking and looking for work to actually work up the courage to ask for a date...not that I could pay the tab, anyway!
Then again, whose fault is it for me not "having" a Valentine? It's all me, of course! I'm the one walking about labeling or not labeling other people with the same title we'd give a piece of mail. So I realized earlier this week that I certainly did have a Valentine and, better yet, I'd been getting ephemera from her every week for the past two years!
This is just a fancy way of saying I have a subscription to Newsweek as gifted to me by my dear old Grandmother.
Pitiful, right? I don't think so. I do love that magazine. Every week, I take a break from the job hunting and freelancing to enjoy that what I might be purchasing for myself: the best political commentary, interviews, and journalism on shiny paper with a dab of humor and art criticism. If I had the time, I'd praise or rebut everything in it.
Which brings me to the current February 15, 2010 issue. Set aside the fact that the issue is dated one whole day in the future (I never quite understood this trick) but within the magazine's pages were a couple of conflicting articles that could really do for a kiss-and-make-up this Valentine's Day. So below the fold, we'll try to get that done for them, considering they have less than 24 hours to come to terms with yourselves.
This race just keeps getting more fun to watch. The late breaking news tonight is that Caribou Barbie herself has endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. That's right. The GOP's most recent VP nominee just declined to endorse the GOP's candidate and went on and gave her blessing to the teabagger. The ever awesome Weekly Standard has the scoop.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD just received a statement from Sarah Palin endorsing conservative Doug Hoffman for Congress:
The people of the 23rd Congressional District of New York are ready to shake things up, and Doug Hoffman is coming on strong as Election Day approaches! He needs our help now.
The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it's important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York's 23rd Congressional district. It's my honor to endorse Doug and to do what I can to help him win, including having my political action committee, SarahPAC, donate to his campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law.
Our nation is at a crossroads, and this is once again a "time for choosing."
I wonder if she can see Watertown from her house?
I'm not kidding when I say that I'm going to be sorry to see this one end.
I'm sure that most people reading this saw the big healthcare speech, so I'll save the heavy analysis, other than to say that I'm pretty happy, not least because it called the opposition out to the woodshed without ever even seeming particularly impolite.
So that leaves what many people may not have seen, to wit: the aftermath of the speech and what's going on today. First, the Republican "response," as delivered by Congressman (and doctor) Charles Boustany of Louisiana. (Apparently, they've forgotten what happened the last time that they tried to respond to Obama with someone from Louisiana.)
Just as evidently, Dr. Boustany forgot to mention a few things about the medical career that apparently makes him an expert on why preventing malpractice lawsuits is the best way to make healthcare cheaper: such as the fact that he was sued for malpractice 8 times, and lost 3 of those times... the worst example being a man who went in for heart bypass surgery and woke up missing his left leg.
Also, on a more comical note, he once attempted to buy a British lordship. Apparently he didn't realize that the only people willing to sell those are con artists.
If you saw the speech, you also saw the moment when Obama was interrupted by a heckler--a member of Congress, no less--who shouted that Obama was lying about healthcare reform not covering illegal aliens.
This man turned out to be Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC02), who in his outrage didn't seem to know or care that to shout at the President like that is both against the House rules on decorum, and his oath as a US military reserve officer. As somebody said around the beginning of the Civil War: South Carolina. Too small to be a republic, too large to be an insane asylum.
Apparently this isn't the first time Mr. Wilson has had trouble keeping his mouth shut when it would have been better for him to do so. Way back in 2003 when Essie Mae Washington-Williams publicly revealed that she was the illegitimate daughter of Strom Thurmond, Wilson commented that among other things he didn't believe the woman's claim; he found the idea "unseemly"; and that he felt even if she was telling the truth, she shouldn't have revealed it because "It's a smear on the image that [Thurmond] has as a person of high integrity who has been so loyal to the people of South Carolina."
Riiight.
Wilson never backed down from the position that she should have stayed silent, even after the Thurmond family publicly acknowledged that the woman's claim was completely accurate.
The last gem of the say is from none other than Sarah Palin, apparently still living on Bizzaro World, who complained (via Facebook) about the President referring to the "death panels" nonsense she started as "a lie."
In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I've raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns "bogus," "irresponsible," and "a lie" -- so much for civility.
There you have it: On Palin World it's apparently okay to call a major party presidential candidate a terrorist, say that he wants to kill disabled children and old people, make things up out of thin air, and if you get called on it, well then it's the other guy who's not being civil.
The good news? In the time since Rep. Wilson's shout heard round the world, his Democratic opponent for next year has gotten a bit of a boost, to the tune of almost half a million dollars worth of new fundraising, and growing by the hour. Pity Chris Lee didn't feel a little more boisterous last night.
One of the more bizarre and rambling speeches we have seen in quite some time as Sarah Palin goes Galt. Let the waves of krazy wash over you as you try, and fail, to look away:
According to the conservative Republican line of thinking, one is "insensitive" and the other is what a true conservative should do with government spending and economics.
The day of reckoning is upon us, folks. Without further ado, here is your official election prediction open thread.
I encourage all of you to officially submit your guestimates at kos before 1 pm.
For the record, my prediction is as follows:
60 Democratic Senate seats
40 Republican Senate seats
258 Democratic House seats
177 Republican House seats
382 Obama Electoral Votes
156 McCain Electoral Votes
52.9 Obama Popular Vote Percentage
46.1 McCain Popular Vote Percentage
My methodology was that
1) the minor party candidates would total 1% of the national individual vote. That's about what it was in 2004. I suspect that Barr may get more votes than Nader in '04, but the overall percentage will be mitigated by massive turnout among the major parties, especially on the Democratic side.
2) For electoral vote purposes, Obama gets all of the states he is currently ahead in, as per electoral-vote.com, plus Georgia because of Black turnout that every pollster is underrepresenting, Missouri because Obama will win there ever-so-slightly, and he snags 3 electoral votes from one of Montana or the Dakotas.
3) For the senate, we get the easy 58 seats everybody expects, plus Al Franken wins by the seat of his pants and the aforementioned huge black turnout sweeps Jim Martin to victory in Georgia.
4) For the house, I essentially just divied up the swing districts as alotted by pollster.com as I thought they would go, but I also noticed that pollster isn't as on top of their game on the local scene, as they currently have NY-13 as "strong republican." So I corrected that in my estimation. For the record, I picked Massa, Maffei and Kyrzan to win.
5) For the State Senate, I think Foley and Addabbo are locks, clinching control of the senate, Zell Millers, Joe Liebermans Ruben Diaz's, Carl Kruger's not withstanding. I think Mesi pulls off a squeaker, Dollinger is 50/50, and one of our grassroots/netroots heroes Don Barber or Paloma Capanna pull out a victory, Darrel Aubertine-style. And Stach survives.
6) And finally, the New York City board of elections is a complete ff'n joke. I requested an absentee ballot so I could go poll-watching in a swing state, but that ballot never came. So I will stay in NYC, vote, and make calls all day. It's sad how broken our state government is. Just another reminder will be when we vote tomorrow with voting machines that were probably around the last time NY had a Democratic Senate. Hopefully all that will change starting TOMORROW!
A Canadian radio station gives Ms. Teen South Carolina a call pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy- he tells her how her saw the Hustler "documentary," about her life, tells her he has similar foreign policy views as her because he can see Belgium from his house, and asks her if Joe the Plumber is her husband. And she doesn't realize she's getting pranked until they tell her at the end of the call.
A legislative investigation has concluded that Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power in pushing for the firing of an Alaska state trooper who was once married to her sister, or by failing to prevent her husband Todd from doing so.
I received a very interesting e-mail from a progressive blogger in Alaska last night. In that e-mail was a gold mine: The official analysis from the McCain campaign on the investigation that has hounded Sarah Palin in Alaska.
That same blogger followed up with this explanation, which should give you some idea of what this investigation has been like in the state:
I apologize for sending that flaming piece of crap without an explanation. I forget that we have folks in our community outside of Alaska who are not necessarily familiar with all the bizarre antics of the McCain-Palin Campaign up here.
They have taken over our state government. They filed suits against the investigator trying to stop him. They encouraged (through our Palinbot Attorney General) 8 of the witnesses (including Todd Palin himself) to ignore subpoenas to testify. As a result of a Superior Court and then Supreme Court ruling which upheld the validity of the Legislative Council's investigation AND their subpoena power, the criminals then "decided" to testify and Todd Palin filed a huge, long deposition.
It looks like this alleged "report" from the McCain/Palin Campaign is Todd's deposition almost verbatim.
Tomorrow is the presentation of the Monegan Report by independent investigator Stephen Branchflower. Tomorrow, the Legislative Council will vote on whether or not to release it. That's what we've been working on so incredibly hard, for folks to vote to release the report. However, we're working against a slick campaign who are making some serious threats against any Republican who stands against the Governor. They decided to get this piece of crap out first, in hopes that the pressure they've exerted on the Republican Legislators will cause them to quash it and theirs will be the only one.
What I have done is copy and pasted the entire analysis from the McCain campaign below the fold. It amounts to a few pages on paper, so it is lengthy. But it's a very interesting read nonetheless. Keep in mind that this report is straight from the McCain-Palin campaign, so it's going to be loaded with partisan rhetoric and pointing the finger at others.
I read it a few times last night and kept shaking my head throughout. It really is amazing how far the campaign has gone to defend her. My guess is that McCain was so clueless about her that the campaign had no idea she had this scandal in Alaska until after they had picked her. Now they are spending their time (and presumably campaign resources) defending her and her husband.
By the way, why does Todd Palin play such a heavy role in state politics? Imagine if Michelle Paige Paterson was doing the things he was doing. Here in New York, I think there would be an uproar. But in Alaska, it seems to be ignored and not considered a big deal.
Again, the report is below the fold. It's an interesting read if you are curious as to how the McCain campaign is trying to spin this.
As Phillip discussed the freakjobs who attend McCain/Palin rallies and how the remaining weeks of the campaign are going to see a desperate hail mary of character assasination against Barack Obama by the GOP, JedReport has put out a good video on the actually relevant terrorist associations of Miss Teen South CarolinaDan QuayleWilliam Henry Gist (look it up) Sarah Palin- enjoy:
With their campaign tanking across the board along with the economy, the McCain campaign is taking off the gloves, as the say, or, perhaps, the hoods
Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
...
The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.
6 months ago, I figured that this would be a desperately ugly and mean campaign twinged with not so subtle racist overtones. I have been pleased that, despite some exceptions, it hasn't been as bad as I had feared. Now, with the race slipping away from them, I'm afraid that the racist underbelly of the GOP is going to be roused once again. This is just the beginning. The next four weeks are going to be disgusting.
I guess we now know why the McCain campaign wanted to keep the press from mingling with their supporters at those rallies in Florida yesterday, which just goes to show that this wasn't an accident. This wasn't just some racist wackjobs infiltrating their events. The campaign is stoking this crap and they are doing so for a reason.
It's their last best shot and it's all they've got left.
Sarah Palin seems destined to spend the next few weeks in an undisclosed location before heading back to Alaska to govern, or possibly start hosting her own morning show (or both), so let's enjoy these while we can.
You've been reading about this infamous question for the last day or so. Here it finally is. It's not pretty.
Worst. VP. Pick. Ever.
COURIC: What other Supreme Court decisions [than Roe v. Wade] do you disagree with?
PALIN: Well, let's see. There's --of course --in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are--those issues, again, like Roe v Wade where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know--going through the history of America, there would be others but--
COURIC: Can you think of any?
PALIN: Well, I could think of--of any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a Vice President, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.
Really? I mean she couldn't even cough up Exxon v. Baker?
Palin's answer here makes me yearn for the wisdom and insight of answers like "in what respect, Charlie?"
I have a strict rule against writing in lolcat but it was awfully tough not to title this post "in ur wite hous readen ur newz sourcez".
Update: And check out this answer to the question of whether or not global warming is caused by man (I can't find footage of it yet):
Palin: You know there are - there are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts. I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate.
Update update: It comes at the five minute mark of this video from CBS.
Phillip has been doing a great job of putting up selected very disturbing clips of Dan Quale Sarah Palin in her interview with Katie Couric these past few days.
COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.
Is this for real or is it one really long SNL sketch?
