ACORN does many things under the umbrella of "community organizing." They agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare workers (that is, those welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits) and organize voter registration efforts (always for Democrats, of course). Because they are on the side of righteousness and justice, they aren't especially fastidious about their methods. In 2006, for example, ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. The only trouble was, with the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the "worst case of election fraud in our state's history." As Fox News reported:
"The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms."
And ACORN's tie-in to Barack Obama:
ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff -- the very people who would later descend on Chicago's banks as CRA shakedown artists. The Democratic nominee later funneled money to the group through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, ditto. Obama was not just sympathetic -- he was an ACORN fellow traveler.
Jeez, his dad was a pretty honorable guy, but Junior didn't get those genes. First it was his idiotic article in Rolling Stone about how the Republicans stole the 2004 election in Ohio. Now get this discussion of weird weather:
The fog consolidated and a waterspout hundreds of feet high rose from the white ocean and darted across its surface, landing for a moment on a moored outboard to spin it like a top, moving toward a distant shore where it briefly became a sand funnel, and then diffusing into the atmosphere as it rained down bits of beach on the harbor. That same day, two waterspouts appeared on Long Island Sound.
Those odd climatological phenomena led me to reflect on the rapidly changing weather patterns that are altering the way we live. Lightning storms and strikes have tripled just since the beginning of the decade on Cape Cod.
Of course, the weather is constantly changing; what's not changing is climate. What's it all about? Big Oil, according to Kennedy. And that leads him into a little Palin-bashing, the favorite pastime of the liberal intelligentsia these days:
Meanwhile, Alaska is melting before our eyes; entire villages erode as sea ice vanishes, glaciers are disappearing at a frightening clip, and "dancing forests" caused by disappearing permafrost astonish residents and tourists. Palin had to keep her head buried particularly deep in an oil well to ever have denied that humans are causing climate change. But, as Upton Sinclair pointed out, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Go over and read the Jawa Report on the astroturfing of an anti-Palin YouTube by a publicity firm with extensive ties to the Democratic Party and to Barack Obama.
Let me first point you to the Bush administration's so-called Wall Street bailout bill, here, so that you can see for yourself that this treachery is being conducted in the light of day. Fascism is finally and formally out of the right-wing closet even if the F word is not yet openly being used (although it should be, and often).
No, of course nobody's using the "F" word. Jeez, Larissa doesn't hang out much in the dens of the lefty intellectuals, does she? And this is just hilarious:
The other option, the one I have long prayed we would never need to even consider, is a total revolution. But, If Congress won't act in its own self-defense, in the defense of democracy, in defense of us - the people who have elected them to protect us from this very danger - then what is left for us to do? I don't want to see it come down to this, but I fear that it will.
So this should be a celebratory, but the truth is that, uh, I’m in a different mood tonight, um, partly because, uh, we just saw this week, uh, uh, a storm sweep through the Gulf, and there are millions of people without power, tens of thousands of people without a place to live. Uh, here in Los Angeles, there was a tragedy that, uh, took the lives of so many. Uh, and over the last couple of days, we’ve seen reports of the worst financial crisis that we’ve had in generations. Uh, and we don’t yet know how it’s going to play itself out.
This is one reason for confidence even though the polls show a slight swing back towards Obama. I don't think they'll let Obama use the teleprompter. McCain absolutely revels in his ability to speak extemporaneously, while Obama fumbles, hesitates, and minces his words.
Carly Fiorina's taking some flack today for noting that Sarah Palin would probably be unqualified to run Hewlett Packard.
John McCain adviser Carly Fiorina said Tuesday that if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) was called upon to run Hewlett Packard, as Fiorina did, the Alaska Republican wouldn't be ready.
"Do you think [Palin] has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett Packard?" Fiorina was asked on a St. Louis radio show.
"No, I don't," Fiorina said without further explanation.
I see nothing particularly controversial about that. Business people are different from politicians and require different sets of skills. President Bush, with his MBA from Harvard, might qualify to run a company like H-P. Google didn't hire Al Gore to be their CEO or COO, they hired him to be a member of the board.
Needless to say the netkooks are soiling their Pampers at the "admission".
Anybody remember all that nonsense about how Obama was a post-racial candidate? Congratulations if you didn't buy it:
In this latest survey, white voters back Sen. McCain 56 - 37 percent, up from 50 - 42 percent August 13. Black voters support the Democrat 93 - 7 percent, compared to 94 - 1 percent. Men back McCain 53 - 40 percent, reversing a 48 - 45 percent Obama lead, while women stay with Obama 54 - 38 percent, compared to 53 - 38 percent.
Of course, that's not how Quinnipiac University portrays the story; it's played as McCain surges among whites. And this little quote gives me just a little concern for Q-pac's objectivity:
"The McCain-Palin ticket has narrowed the gap dramatically, but it will take more than this post convention bounce for the Republicans to win in true blue New Jersey. The upcoming debates probably will provide a clue to whether Sen. McCain can build on his current momentum, or whether the tide will turn back to the Democrats," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
True blue New Jersey went for John Kerry in 2004 by 6.5 percentage points. New York went for Kerry by 18 points, Connecticut by 10, Rhode Island by 21, Massachusetts by 25, Delaware by 8 and Maryland by 13. In fact, the only state near NJ that Kerry came closer to losing was Pennsylvania, at +2.5%.
Rasmussen: McCain and Biden Ready, Obama Not So Much
Well, all the focus on experience by the Obama campaign about Sarah Palin appears to be paying off:
Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters say John McCain is prepared right now to be president, and 50% say the same thing about Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden. Forty-four percent (44%) say the man at the top of Biden's ticket, Barack Obama, is ready, but 45% say he isn’t.
Just 26% say McCain is not ready, and 34% feel that way about Biden, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Over half of voters (52%) say McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, is not prepared to be president, but 33% disagree
And in a sign that the voters are right, Obama is trying to cut deals with Iraq to make sure that there are no US troop withdrawals before the election:
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."
He wants Congress to be involved in negotiations? Why do I suspect he won't feel that way in the horrific event that he is elected? As noted by Jeff Goldstein, Obama is also undercutting his entire base, which is anxious for troop withdrawals to begin yesterday.
Obama can still win Florida despite the polling gains McCain has made since naming Sarah Palin his running mate, and there is no sign Obama is pulling back in Florida yet. Far from it. Obama allies say he has about 350 paid staffers in the state and about 50 field offices, including in places not known as fertile ground for Democrats, such as Sun City Center, Lake City and Sebring.
But for all the attention to Florida from the Obama campaign, there's little tangible evidence it's paying off.
He is farther behind in the state than John Kerry was at this point in 2004, even though McCain began buying Florida TV ads only last week. By this time in 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign had spent $13-million on Florida TV. In the rolling average of Florida polls compiled by the Web site RealClearPolitics.com, Obama has never taken the lead over McCain in Florida, and the latest average shows him behind by 5 percentage points. They were tied in early August.
The Obama campaign has no organized presence in Southern Ohio; southern Ohio defined as south of Interstate 70 which runs east west and loosely divides the state in half both geographically and culturally. The Obama campaign’s focus of effort is evident in the traditionally Democratic strongholds of northeast Ohio, the Cleveland area and Mahoning Valley, in addition to Franklin County/Columbus in the center of the state.
Certainly these are densely populated areas with huge numbers of Democratic constituents, however, they voted for Clinton in the primary, and even if they have increased the registered democrats in these areas the state still can not be won without a majority of the independent hardscrabble rural voter spread throughout southern Ohio from West Virginia to Indiana. Focusing on Columbus, Cleveland, and Dayton is like campaigning in California; it feels good but we’ve already won there.
Remember, no candidate yet has been able to win without a victory in two of three states: Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. And things are tight in the Keystone State, with Obama showing only a 2-3 point lead.
FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."
The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.
Yes, and five years ago you could have said that Palin was wrong. But Anne Kornblut is wrong here; does anybody deny that the soldiers heading over to Iraq are going there to fight Al Qaeda?
Seriously, I used to have some respect for the Washington Post but they've gone overboard for Obama.
She's a "cocky wacko," he told a Washington think tank earlier this week.
Chafee, the lone Senate Republican to vote against the Iraq war who endorsed Obama's White House bid earlier this year, told an audience at the New America Foundation in Washington Tuesday that Palin's selection has energized Obama backers.
"People were coming into my office, phone calls were flooding in, e-mails were coming in, 'I just sent money to Obama, I couldn't sleep last night' — from the left. To see this cocky wacko up there," he said.
Stinkin' Lincoln is a 9-11 "Truther"; he has agreed to serve on an independent panel of kooks and nutbars like Ed Asner, Ralph Shoenman and William Pepper to investigate the terrorist attacks to determine that the US government was behind them.
I commented to my sister today that although I didn't think Obama intentionally told the "lipstick on a pig" joke to refer to Sarah Palin, I did think the rest of what Obama said was just as repugnant, and not getting any play:
After starting off with "you can wrap an old fish in a newspaper and it's still going to stink, he adds:
"Look, she's new, she hasn't been on the scene, she's got five kids. And my hat goes off to anybody whose looking after five. I've got two and they tire Michelle and me out," he said.
The ever-popular backhanded compliment. She's got five kids? Well, one of them is off to Iraq tomorrow. Another is apparently going to get married. She's new on the scene? Barack, we're still getting used to you, too. I realize that after 19 months on the road, you think we should know you, but that's your experience, not ours.
Look, these folks are completely rattled. They thought they'd bring up one or two things about Sarah Palin and everybody'd agree that she was totally unqualified compared to Barack, who after all was editor of Haaaavaaad Law Review. And yet she blew everybody away at the RNC, and is now suddenly the most interesting person in America. There is no comparison. Moose burgers versus arugula? Snow machine races versus basketball? Alaska versus Hawaii?
Just repetition. Check out this hilarious article on how ticked off the rest of the world will be if we don't elect the Lightbringer:
Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.
If McCain wins, he'll face a Democratic congress that's beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won't even return McCain's phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It'll be four years of all-out war.
I confess this guy provided us with some amusement during the primary campaign, but in an interview with Pacifica Radio, he goes a little off-message on Sarah Palin, talking about how she's a great pick, that she's going to come out looking fine on the Troopergate issue, etc.
Okay, the media have gone from simple derangement to outright mania. Check out David Plotz:
When I mentioned my Palin dreams to Slate colleagues, they volunteered their own. One Obama-supporting colleague dreamed she had urged her young son to kill Palin with a string bean. Another dreamed she was at a fashion show and Palin served her crème fraîche on little scooped corn chips. A third says, "In the Sarah Palin dream I keep having, she has superhuman powers but is not really a person at all. In fact, she is more like the weather with glasses and an up-do, pushing clouds around and pitching lightning bolts."
LOL! They go on to urge people to send in their own dreams about Palin. Of course, mine's pretty simple:
I dream I see Sarah Palin standing proudly beside John McCain as he recites the oath of office of the Presidency.
I didn’t want to mention that I had a dream about Sarah Palin (she was driving a piece of farm equipment back and forth on the football field of the high school catty-corner to my house, laughing maniacally and I was trying desperately to install some kind of codec on my laptop so they could capture it on video) because it just seemed to weird and creepy.
Freud would be scribbling frantically in his notebook at this point.
Update II:
I dream of Sarah with the light brown hair, She's driving a tractor, I'm in my underwear...
A week ago the liberals were claiming that she was up there with Tom Eagleton, now she's the undeniable star of the Republican Party. Hey, I'm a McCain man, and I am thrilled he's at the top of the ticket, but part of being a star is being new and Sarah's undeniably new.
Some polls coming out recently undeniably reflect the popularity of the choice. For example, an ABC/Washington Post poll found an incredible swing in support for McCain among white women:
Much of the shift toward McCain stems from gains among white women, voters his team hoped to sway with the pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. White women shifted from an eight-point pre-convention edge for Obama to a 12-point McCain advantage now.
That's such a staggering result that it seems incredible. Essentially it means that 10% of all white women have changed their support from Obama to McCain.
John McCain's 6 percentage-point bounce in voter support spanning the Republican National Convention is largely explained by political independents shifting to him in fairly big numbers, from 40% pre-convention to 52% post-convention in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.
It's fair to say that Palin isn't doing this all by her lonesome, but she sure ain't a drag on the ticket.
Working mothers in particular should be holding their breath. The McCain camp's decision to pitch Palin's Supermom-of-five status as one of her chief assets has opened yet another front in the endless and endlessly counterproductive Mommy Wars. The moment Palin's addition to the ticket was announced, women began publicly and privately savaging the hard-charging governor for perceived mothering missteps both great and small. (What kind of pregnant woman is reckless enough to travel twelve-plus hours from Texas to Alaska after her water breaks? What mom subjects her pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old to the scrutiny of a presidential race?! How dare she take her newborn to a campaign event without socks?!!) How, or whether one should even try, to balance career and family remains a raw subject for women in this country, and the centrality of Palin's motherhood to her candidacy guarantees that this corrosive debate will rage for the remainder of the election.
It would seem more productive to point out that those leveling those claims are engaging in sexist behavior, but of course that doesn't fit Cottle's desire to bash Sarah Palin.
Not that they have been models of restraint before.
Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.
Have there been a lot of filibusters? And the worst eight years in our country's history? I'd say 1861-1868 has to be a contender.
The McCain campaign's decision to keep Sarah Palin away from the slavering wolves of the media is... sexism!
Excitable Andrew leads off (no link):
The sexism that implies that someone cannot stand up to reporters because she is a woman is appalling. This entire pick, of course, is incredibly sexist, and the handling of her in the last week the most sexist double standard I have ever seen in American politics. Can you imagine Hillary Clinton saying she wasn’t going to answer questions for two weeks? Or Margaret Thatcher? Or Kay Bailey Hutchison? Or Elizabeth Dole? And none of these women were ever as close to global power as Sarah Palin now is. This is getting to Manchurian Candidate levels of creepiness. It’s deeply sinister and slightly terrifying.
Projection from the dolt who has been at the forefront of spreading the most ridiculous rumors about Sarah Palin.
Subtle and not-so-subtle sexism. All of which needs to be called out.
I have almost a zero-tolerance for sexism at any level and don’t agree with the opinion that we dilute the cause of calling it out if we point it out when we see it, any of it.
And has Zimon denounced the sexism of those who say Sarah Palin can't balance the demands of a family and the Vice Presidency?
Be sure to watch it to the end; he's not just talking the talk. Highly effective; I'd love to see the McCain campaign pick this up and run it as it is.
This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.
Okay, let's start with the easy stuff. Little Black Sambo may have been a well-known character in fiction in my parents' childhood. I'm about 7 years older than Sarah Palin, and all I know is that some tigers were running around the tree he was perched in and turned into butter. Or something. So I would not be surprised if Sarah Palin had never heard the Little Black Sambo story. Indeed, it appears that the writer himself doesn't know the story:
Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe....
Second, consider the way the "reporter" got the story. He doesn't spell it out but:
It’s not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin – especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that “all circuits are busy” or numbers just wouldn’t ring. I should think a state that’s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.
So it appears that he called a couple of restaurants in Wasilla, asked to speak to a few waitresses and then asked them for any dirt on Palin. Note as well, that Lucille and others are effectively anonymous sources for this story. But that's a feature, because it reinforces the writer's second point, that Palin is vindictive.
And this really stretches things:
people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.
Never mind that her husband is an Eskimo himself, you know.
“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.
So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’
As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.
With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:
Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.
I thought I'd read a little about what Obama himself said about his community organizing days. One immediate thought is that Obama never really explains where the idea came from. That he did it intentionally is clear; what is unclear is the impetus:
In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer. There wasn't much detail to the idea; I didn't know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly.
Now, can you think of anybody embarking on a career path who can't explain exactly what they will be doing? I'll grant you that I sometimes have a hard time explaining what I do to people; every year or two my sister will ask me again, but that's because what I do is fairly specialized.
Obama dresses up his idea as being inspired by the civil rights movement:
At the time, about to graduate from college, I was operating mainly on impulse, like a salmon swimming blindly upstream toward the site of his own conception. In classes and seminars, I would dress up these impulses in the slogans and theories that I'd discovered in books, thinking-falsely-that the slogans meant something, that they somehow made what I felt more amenable to proof. But at night, lying in bed, I would let the slogans drift away, to be replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past I had never known.
They were of the civil rights movement, mostly, the grainy black-and-white footage that appears every February during Black History Month, the same images that my mother had offered me as a child
Obama couldn't find anybody to hire him, so he got a regular job. But then an opportunity arose from a man named Marty Kaufman:
He ordered more hot water and told me about himself. He was Jewish, in his late thirties, had been reared in New York. He had started organizing in the sixties with the student protests, and ended up staying with it for fifteen years. Farmers in Nebraska. Blacks in Philadelphia. Mexicans in Chicago. Now he was trying to pull urban blacks and suburban whites together around a plan to save manufacturing jobs in metropolitan Chicago. He needed somebody to work with him, he said. Somebody black.
Or was he really something else? Obama admits in Dreams From My Father that some of the characters are composites. According to this post, Kaufman is one of two people:
[Obama press secretary Reid] Cherlin said Kruglik is a character named Marty Kaufman in the Obama memoir; in a 2004 interview Obama said Kaufman was Gerald Kellman, the man who hired him to come to Chicago to work as a community organizer.
This is, of course, one of the problems with Obama's book. Although the foreword to Audacity of Hope includes a gushing review of Dreams about how honest Barack had been, the book is undependable.
Meanwhile, the Netkooks are grousing that Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani derided Obama's community organizing days. Of course, Palin's comment was intended as payback for Obama's dismissing her as a small-town mayor. But some perceive darker motives:
But look, let’s call a spade a spade: When Giuliani sneered about community organizers on the “South side” of Chicago, it’s pretty clear what he was saying: Barack Obama spent his time rabble-rousing among black people. It’s no different then when the RNC called him a “street organizer.” A community organizer can be a PTA member or a Christian Coalition lieutenant. Indeed, there’s something deeply conservative about the vocation, which informally organizes citizens to demand better, fairer, and wiser treatment from detached government bureaucrats. But that’s really not what Palin and Giuliani and the RNC are getting at. Community organizer isn’t being used to describe a job but a background. Obama organized poor black people. Helped channel their anger and grievances and anxieties. That’s change you can fear.
The Kos Kids have been spreading the meme that "Jesus was a community organizer; Pilate was a governor". Never mind that comparisons to Jesus are probably not helpful given McCain's success with "The One" ad.
As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.
“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”
And yet he would not vote for it. Un-freaking believable.
Well, it turns out to be a $3000 dress and $600 shoes and about $300,000 of jewelry. And this made me chuckle at the chucklehead that wrote it:
Wow! No wonder McCain has so many houses: his wife has the price of a Scottsdale split-level hanging from her ears.
If you think you can get a Scottsdale home for $300,000, you're dreaming. And split-level? That's something that people back east have, like basements.
Sorry, that's sort of common, isn't it? I'll give my massive traffic to Ace rather than linking Sully:
"10.40 pm. We've just seen a picture of a seven year old cradling and stroking the hair of a Down Syndrome infant. This, apparently, is relevant to deciding who should be the next vice-president of the United States."
As compared to spending an entire weekend repeating ridiculous Trig Truther rumors about that Down Syndrome infant? Choke on it, Andrew.
I apologize for talking about a Hillary Clinton supporter around here, but Ann's latest (no link) was recommended to me as a very funny Ann Coulter column. But despite my obvious elation at Governor Palin's terrific speech, I cannot help but deplore Coulter's reaction:
Our motto: Sarah Palin is only a heartbeat away!
My motto: Ann Coulter's bankruptcy filing is only a book sale away. So don't buy that book.
Liberal Women Hearing Echoes in Criticism of Palin
Glad to see that some feminists are beginning to denounce the sexism coming out of their own party:
And Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn wrote: “Of course, women can be good mothers and have careers at the same time. I’ve done both. Other women in public office have children…but…a mother’s role is different from a father’s.”
The message? Sarah Palin: bad mother.
On that count we have no doubt these accusations would never be made about a man. In that sense, Sally Quinn is right – and that’s why things have got to change.
The very notion that Sarah Palin should not have accepted this nomination because she is a mother with demanding challenges underscores just how far we have to go.
This comes from Women Count. Who are the people behind Women Count? Must be a bunch of fundy anti-abortion, anti-American fundy fundies, right?
Susie Tompkins Buell is the co-founder of ESPRIT. Since selling her business in 1996 she has been heavily involved in political activities. A longtime friend and supporter of Hillary Clinton’s, her main focus is to support and encourage women to enter the political arena as she believes the imbalance of men and women in government is the cause of many of our problems.
Rosemary Camposano (Communications Director, WomenCount) is a former communications and public relations executive working in Silicon Valley for such companies as Motorola, Oracle, Seagate, 3Com, and others. After eight years at home raising her son, she became impassioned about the rapid deterioration of American civil liberties and has become active politically as a result.
Jehmu Greene (Political Director, WomenCount) is the former President of Rock the Vote. She is a regular guest on Fox News Channel and has been featured on The Daily Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Anderson Cooper 360°, MTV News, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, ABC World News, and all major cable news networks. She has also previously worked as Director of Women's Outreach and Southern Political Director at the Democratic National Committee.
Are they deploring the pick of Palin even as they deplore the sexism of the attacks against her? Nope:
This historic election continues to be noted for its "firsts," and now here's another one: the first woman to be on a Republican presidential ticket. The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be John McCain's running mate sends a clear message - women voters are the most coveted demographic in this election. The selection is a deliberate effort to reach out to women in this election. After all, women make up more than half of the electorate, and recent polls show that women comprise a majority of undecided voters.
They do highlight that they don't agree with her positions:
Much will be said and written in the days ahead about Gov. Palin's views on issues, and we urge you to consider these positions with depth and thoughtfulness - she is anti-choice, pro-gun, and pro-big oil.
Which is certainly their right as liberal women. But they also make it clear that they will be watching:
It is good for the political process that woman politicians will continue to play such a central role on the campaign trail. Gov. Palin's selection also means the media has another chance to get it right when it comes to covering a serious woman candidate in a presidential election. Just as with Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, we'll be watching closely to see how she is treated when it comes to gender bias. We need you to be our eyes and ears on the campaign trail. If it happens, WomenCount will be right there.
So please, liberals, continue to tell us that Palin's not a serious candidate.
I'm not as confident as the writer, but this strikes me as on the money:
Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.
As I said when the nomination was announced, Palin was a choice from surprising strength, a nomination that said, "I'm going to win this thing." Biden was a choice from surprising weakness, a nomination that said "I hope I don't blow it."
That's what liberal voices are saying today. Check out the Moderate(ly Liberal) Voice has to say this morning:
Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Because when all is said and done, this is what selecting a vice presidential running mate is all about.
The picture shows LBJ being sworn in as President on the plane back from Dallas. Nice to see that Libs do know how to play the fear card, despite their wails every time the Republicans bring it up.
Of course, if Barack Obama is elected, he'll be taking that oath, no bullet required. If Sarah Palin isn't qualified, then neither is Obama. But maybe the LBJ picture serves a dual role; maybe his point is that we shouldn't worry about Obama's lack of experience because somebody will shoot him and then we'll have Steady Joe Biden at the tiller?
I don't know what else to say in response to this post from John Hawkins of Right Wing News, on his not being accepted as a blogger at the RNC this week. John knows why it happened:
My best guess as to why I'm not being allowed to go to the RNC is a post I wrote back in March called, "Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President." The piece savagely denounced McCain for his breathtakingly dishonest flip-flop over illegal immigration, was widely linked, and a source of mine inside the campaign told me they were very aware of it.
Yeah, I'd guess that's the reason. John often notes that he's a conservative first and a Republican second; well, this is not a conservative convention it's a Republican convention.
Complicating matters is the undeniable fact that Right Wing News is one of the most important blogs around. Some liberal blogs have apparently been allowed to attend; what's the difference?
The difference is that what Hawkins says matters to conservatives. He can and probably has influenced a lot of people with his "Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain for President" post. That's why he wrote it, no?
I like Hawkins' blog a lot (although for some unknown reason I didn't enjoy it as much in the primary season). John has been very supportive of Brainster, Kerry Haters and Screw Loose Change over the years, and I would be a back-stabber indeed if I did not note that he has given his support freely to my efforts and those of many other smaller blogs.
But at some point you have to accept the fact that your favored candidate didn't win in the primaries. I know that's easy for me to say, since mine did. If you say that nothing McCain can do will change your mind, then why in the world should they reward you for that opinion with coveted access to the convention? What's Ann Coulter doing these days?
People who make these "I can never support that man" pledges seem to feel that there is some viable third option on the ballot other than Democrat or Republican. I remember those folks in 1992, assuring us that if we just sat on our hands and let Clinton win in 1992, he'd be so awful for the economy that everybody'd be happy to elect a real conservative in 1996. And then of course Clinton did not flop as predicted and we came a couple hundred votes in Florida from losing four straight elections and any shot at control of the Supreme Court.
There is no "lose today, so we can win tomorrow". If Obama is elected, he will almost certainly serve eight years as president of the United States. He'll do the brilliant triangulation that Clinton pioneered and the media will swoon over his every move. With a compliant congress there is literally almost no limit to what he can accomplish in the next two years.
