Current Mood: distressed

Per Glenn Greenwald in Salon:

Somehow, in Sarah Palin's brain, it's a threat to the First Amendment when newspapers criticize her negative attacks on Barack Obama. This is actually so dumb that it hurts:

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."

Current Mood: annoyed

The GOP Ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning
By Christopher Hitchens

[...] This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

sunfell

Current Mood: disgusted

Skinheads 'planned to kill Obama'

Two men have appeared in a US court accused of making threats to kill Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal agents say.

They were also charged with possessing an unregistered firearm and conspiracy to steal from a licensed gun dealer.

The pair were named as Daniel Cowart, 20, and Paul Schlesselman, 18.

Court papers allege that the neo-Nazi skinheads planned to assassinate Mr Obama in a murder spree targeting more than 100 black people.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said the men had made their first appearance before a court in Jackson, Tennessee, on Monday after being arrested last week in Crockett County in the same state. [...]

Current Mood: aggravated

Larry David: Waiting for Nov. 4th

[...] This is like waiting for the results of a biopsy. Actually, it's worse. Biopsies only take a few days, maybe a week at the most, and if the biopsy comes back positive, there's still a potential cure. With this, there's no cure. The result is final. Like death.

Five times a day I'll still say to someone, "I don't know what I'm going to do if McCain wins." Of course, the reality is I'm probably not going to do anything. What can I do? [...]

Current Mood: busy

The Chronicle endorses Barack Obama for president and Joe Biden for vice president of the United States

After carefully observing the Democratic and Republican nominees in drawn-out primary struggles as well as in the general campaign, including three debates, the Chronicle strongly believes that the ticket of Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden offers the best choice to lead the United States on a new course into the second decade of the 21st century.

( Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama. See the video. )

Current Mood: amused

Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly

GM:  OK, the bugbear attacks you.  What do you do?

OBAMA: I send one of my 672 henchmen after it.

MCCAIN:  OK, seriously.  Why does he have so many henchmen?  I'm a level 72 ranger and he's only a level 8 paladin.

OBAMA:  Well, if you'd bought the Grassroots Organizing and Oratory/Colgate Smile proficiencies you could min max it so that you...

MCCAIN: Why is he even IN this campaign? I thought this was supposed to be a high level party.

OBAMA: Well, maybe some people got tired of the grim and squinty "Matterhorn, son of Marathon" shtick you keep doing.  Dude, could you be any less original?

MCCAIN: Oh my god, I did not leave my left nut in a tiger cage in the Tomb of Horrors to spend my Friday nights mopping up after the new kid.

OBAMA: "My friends, I am a totally unoriginal grizzled character class stereotype.  I should lead the party because I have more testicular damage than that one."

MCCAIN: Yeah, well, you pal around with dark elves.

OBAMA: OH NO YOU DIDN'T.
[...]

( From the mouths of our young women... )

Current Mood: quixotic

You control what news you'll see on election day.
( Click for video )

Current Mood: lethargic

Dan Drezner Cuts To The Chase

[...] Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge. [...] George Bush in a dress. [...] [highlighting mine]

Current Mood: anxious

It frequently seems as though no one wants to listen to me about Palin. Maybe if Matt Damon says it?

( Click for video )

Current Mood: contemplative

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anyone else notice the lack of substance in McCain's acceptance speech?

Current Mood: aggravated

NYT Editorial Board: John McCain's Energy Follies

McCain's positions divert public attention from an unavoidable truth: a nation that uses one-quarter of the world’s oil while owning only 3 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way to happiness or self-sufficiency. Governor Palin’s views are alarmingly out of touch with reality. So is Mr. McCain’s decision to welcome them into his campaign.

Current Mood: distressed

Sarah Palin: Dominionist Stalking Horse

The big news, obviously, in the blogosphere today is John McCain's surprise pick for the Republican veep nominee--a relative unknown by the name of Sarah Palin, whom--at least in the more conventional political circles--would appear to be a complete cypher.

Unfortunately, if one digs just a bit deeper, Palin is found to have some very interesting--and very disturbing--connections...among them, being potentially the first Assemblies-linked VP candidate and having a number of links to dominionist groups targeting kids via "bait and switch" evangelism. [...]

dogemperor

Current Mood: annoyed

Dallas Morning News: Texas still leads nation in rate of uninsured residents

[...] Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved." [...]

According to Mr. Goodman, only people who are denied care are truly uninsured – everyone who gets care is effectively insured by some mechanism. "So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care," he said.

Current Mood: contemplative

How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy

Barack Obama is both more left-wing and more right-wing than many people realize. A 15-year debate among economics experts in the Democratic Party helps explain why.

[...] “The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production,” Obama told me. “And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally.” But, he continued, “there are certain things the market doesn’t automatically do.” In other words, free-market policy isn’t likely to dominate his agenda; his project would be fixing the market.

And it does seem to need fixing. For three decades now, the American economy has been in what the historian Sean Wilentz calls the Age of Reagan. The government has deregulated industries, opened the economy more to market forces and, above all, cut income taxes. Much good has come of this — the end of 1970s stagflation, infrequent and relatively mild recessions, faster growth than that of the more regulated economies of Europe. Yet laissez-faire capitalism hasn’t delivered nearly what its proponents promised. It has created big budget deficits, the most pronounced income inequality since the 1920s, and the current financial crisis. [...]

Current Mood: bitchy

Here are 3 stunning facts that could not only change the outcome of this election, but with regard to the first two points, they could change the results of every election for years to come *if* we make enough people aware of them.

1. Over 70% of our National Debt was created by just 3 Republican presidents.
2. According to new research from Larry Bartels out of Princeton, real middle class wage growth is double when a Democrat is president compared to when a Republican is president.
3. 90% of Americans would pay less taxes under Obama's proposed tax plan compared to McCain's.

Current Mood: awake

1. John McCain Votes to Filibuster Minimum Wage Hike
2. McCain housing policy shaped by lobbyist
3. Bush, McCain plug Social Security
4. McCain blasts Obama's and Clinton's attacks on NAFTA
5. McCain in NH: Would Be "Fine" To Keep Troops in Iraq for "A Hundred Years"
6. McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion
7. Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition
8. McCain says overturn the law that legalized abortion
9. McCain Defends Bush's Iraq Strategy

Current Mood: angry

McCain, Gas Prices & the Enron Loophole

A Countdown Special Report on how John McCain’s chief economic advisor and others in his campaign helped create and defend legislation that enabled speculators to run up gas prices.

Current Mood: contemplative

Electing America: Obama, the Supreme Court and the American Exception

[...] it is the underlying prospect of a deeply willed renewal of our national subscription to the government of laws and not of men that has made the Obama candidacy so exhilarating both here and in Europe. But this exhilaration comes also because we hang now, in the interim, by a very finely spun thread. What is at stake in the coming election could not be more clearly drawn than it was in the Supreme Court's five to four affirmation of habeas corpus last week. Five to four! The next President will almost certainly choose two justices during his tenure. John McCain has already indicated that he will choose justices who resemble Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas -- that is, justices who will reverse Roe v. Wade; but such justices will also fail to uphold the real American exception: the citizens' subscription to checks and balances and to the written-out rule of law. [...]